Hope of Morning
by JosephineSilver
Summary: [AU] Kazuto Kirigaya has always lived life in the shadows - it's sort of his family's specialty. Asuna Yuuki has always lived life in her family's shadow - and it's a big shadow to fill. sword art online is a means of escape, if only for a while. of course, neither of them ever considered that virtual reality could be even more of a death game then their actual lives.
1. Act01Act02

__part.01__

Sakura Kirigaya is nineteen years old, and hunting, when she meets Hirano Katsumi.

It is her month to provide for her family and she needs to be quick and clean about it. The dark haired human male she has been following discreetly from the rooftops for about four blocks when he turns into a building. She watches as he makes his way through the lobby into the elevators and makes her move, swinging into the same building via a window some fool had left open.

She lands silently, deftly, in a crouch and bolts for the door that will lead her into the halls of this apartment building before the human that lives in this particular flat can sense her intrusion and call the police, or worse, the CCG.

The dim yellow lighting coming from the cheap bulbs that illuminate the hall are still bright compared to the darkness that made up both the night sky outside and the apartment she had just been in, and Sakura's RC cells work furiously within the space of a few seconds to automatically adjust her eyes - a particularly handy self-preservation instinct that had not yet evolved out of the ghoul race. Her eyes burned as the RC cells made the film of her kakugan begin to form, and she quickly slammed her eyes shut as she frantically banished the sign that, above all else (except eating a meal in public), that would give her away as a ghoul, the monster that stalks the streets.

Her job now was to find that man - the one she had followed here. Truthfully, Sakura did not know why she was so fixated on making _him_ , specifically, her prey, when there had been many easier targets, humans she could have easily taken out over this man who lived in a highly populated building. But she wanted him, had chosen him, and now, she was going to _find_ and _kill_ and _eat_ him.

These thoughts weren't helping her get a hold on her kakugan any.

A warm scent, like ozone and leather, hit her and she knew where the one she was seeking was. Sakura's body automatically slunk into a crouch as she stalked through the hallways with a grace and speed that was decidely not human, RC cells burning and circulating through her entire body, reinforcing her limbs and muscles, and her kakuhou formed and splintered open on her back, ready to call her kagune forth at any moment. _Her prey was near_.

She turned a corner and then she could see him, but he couldn't see her, his back was turned, he was turning a key - was walking inside - was alone now - _she could take him -_

Sakura shook her head. Focus now, bloodlust later. As he swung the door closed behind him and the soft _click-shink_ of the gears in the lock turning closed once again made itself known in her ears, she grinned. No lock would stop her.

With a sound that was contradictorily both the crackling of fire and the shattering of ice, a colourful swirl of RC plasma burst open from her kakuhou and formed, like wings, over her shoulders. With careful focus and aim, the lock and door handle smashed forward from the door, and her hand darted out to catch the heavy metal piece before it could slam against the floor. As she stood from her crouch, her ukaku kagune returned back to it's plasma state from the hardened form it had to be in to fire darts, before curling back into her kakuhou, positioned on her upper back. Though she recalled her kagune, Sakura kept her kakuhou open and activated her kakugan before lightly pushing the door open and stepping inside - both preperation and intimidation were key in a hunt.

The man she had followed was cooking - she could smell it. Sakura had no true idea what it was, exactly, he was preparing in his kitchen, as all human food smelt the same to her - disgusting.

She manouvered her way through the entrance hall that led to what appeared to be his loungeroom, which was adjoined to the kitchen by a small alcove rather than a door. Another, shadowed, hall, led to what Sakura presumed was the bathroom and bedroom.

She blinked. For an apartment in the middle of the city, it was quite large. She then shook her head - she had bigger things to focus on then real estate.

A _click_ was what truly snapped her out of her daze, and she was instantly alert at the sound of what she recognised as the safety of a gun being released. Sakura whirled to face the alcove that led into the man's kitchen and found herself staring down the barrel of a gun that was so obviously modified there was no way it could be legal. More than that, the entire thing stunk of RC.

 _Long dead_ RC.

Though that, of course, didn't mean the RC couldn't become active. The gun shuddered and seemed to swirl as the cells came alive in vicious slashes of red across the barrel and magazine as they sensed their live sister cells that thrived within Sakura and _hungered_ for them.

She swallowed. Of all the people to follow home, to draw her like this, she _had_ to pick the Investigator.

But...no, that didn't make sense. Even off duty, Investigators were expected to carry their quinques - this man had been carrying no silver briefcase, of that she was sure. And no CCG operative would ever wield a gun as a quinque - too dangerous for humans to get caught in the crossfire, and when it came down to it, weapons with RC in them were even more dangerous for the humans that wielded them than they were for ghouls - RC hungered for human blood and flesh far more than the predatory cells of their own kind. However, quinque activated in the presence of ghouls because RC cells could sense one another, like drawing to like. Unless a human bled directly onto a quinque, they wouldn't even register - which was what made the very idea of RC bullets so dangerous to humans on a fundamental level. If shot with one, a sort of necrosis would infect the hit area, and would only spread over time as the RC cells within the bullet devoured the human from the inside out.

So, not an Investigator than, but a particularly crazy human - maybe even a freelance bounty hunter, she'd heard that in less scrupulous countries, where there was no organisation such as the CCG to 'regulate' her kind, they would hunt down ghouls causing problems - for a price.

Sakura bared her teeth at the man and, with barely a conscious thought, her kagune flared into existense around her like a nebula bursting from her back. Speed would be her greatest ally here, though she wasn't entirely sure of her ability to dodge _bullets_ \- godammit, they were both long range fighters, and she wasn't sure of her ability to win against a man who's weapon, unlike hers, wouldn't exhaust his very being.

The man blinked at her. "Amazing," he murmured, seemingly to himself. "An ukaku type." He blinked again - Sakura supposed it was a tic of his as she hardened her kagune and prepared to load him full of RC shards - and spoke, to her, this time. "I've always considered your type to have the most beautiful of kagune," he informed her in a matter-of-fact tone, almost unconcerned with the fact that he was about to die. "I've never seen one in it's unaltered plasma form, however - when the Investigators bring kakuhou from their kills to me so I can forge quinque, I've only ever been able to coax weak RC crystals from what you call the 'hunting-organ.'"

She snapped - and lobbied every shard she had prepared at the bastard. Besides their lack of endurance, ukaku types had one other, glaring, weakness - when they altered their kagune from the original plasma state that was formed from the liquid muscle from their, as the man put it, 'hunting-organ,' they simply hardened the outer layer into a shell made of lethally sharp projectiles. However, once they were gone, the ukaku type was left with a kagune formed of plasma once again, and after the first round it was harder to form more shards.

The man was hit - but not enough to be fatal, not enough to stop him from pullng the trigger. He aimed for Sakura, and shot; her eyes widened as an RC bullet tore through the delicate plasma of her already weakened kagune.

Her kakugan receded within the space of a single blink - all of the active RC cells in her body pouring towards the tear in what was simultaneously her greatest weapon and biggest vulnerability, her body weakening and collapsing underneath her as she shuddered into shock.

He was standing up, she observed fuzzily. Walking towards her.

Her world went dark.

 __part.02__

Sakura awoke within the space of a second, which surprised her.

Not the speed with which speed had left her - she had been raised to be ready to fight for her life at any moment, and so had trained herself over the years to wake up instantly at the slightest hint of threat.

No, what surprised her was the fact that she had woken up at all.

Cautiously, she levered herself into a sitting position and realised she had been lying, prone, on a couch - a couch that had been torn up by bullets and ukaku shards, stained with blood that was both hers and not; but it wasn't the man's either, the scent didn't match.

Straining her senses, she could hear nor smell any other presence in the apartment with her, which she wasn't sure whether to be thrilled or worried about. An ache situated deep within her back informed her that her kakuhou wasn't manifesting anytime soon and thus denied her access to her kagune, and when she tried to form a film of kakugan over her eyes they burned as RC cells flooded over sclera, pupil and iris, but no layer formed.

Sakura swore as she forced herself up fully onto her feet, and swayed for a moment as she stood. Somehow, over the course of the night, she had lost everything her body had held in reserve, and while she was now healed and whole enough to move and stay conscious, that was about it. Without a constant stream of regenerating RC flooding her muscles and lurking under skin, there was a chance that, right now, even ordinary weapons with no RC enhancements could finish her off.

She gritted her teeth. She had to get out of here, and fast. If she could find food - could eat - she could bring herself up to strength. Indeed, now that she was fully focused and awake, she could sense a gnawing hunger that had been growing within her - and it was close to approaching starvation.

"You're alive." His voice came from behind, from the front hall, filled with relief. "Oh, thank god."

Sakura flinched. She hadn't heard him coming at all, though her hearing was still elevated above a humans, without RC she was almost crippled. "You tried to kill me," she said as she swayed once again. "Relief at my continued existence seems like the wrong reaction; I was expecting something more along the lines of frantic gunfire."

Unbelievably, he laughed. His brown eyes twinkled when he did that. "Yeah, sorry about that," he said in a tone that was - dare she think it? - _genuine_. "It's not everyday you find a ghoul in your apartment. I reacted, in total defense, I might add, don't even _try_ to deny that you were going to kill me."

Sakura couldn't help it - she blinked, commiting the same act she had wondered was a tic of his the night before. He hadn't sounded accusing, or angry...but _teasing_ , as if they knew each other, as if they were old friends.

"I'm Hirano," he grinned all the more widely at her. "Hirano Katsumi, and I've always wanted to talk to a ghoul."

Maybe she wouldn't kill him just yet. This human was...curious, for lack of a better term, nd she couldn't deny she was intrigued. "Sakura," she said, giving no family name. Even if she died here, even if he could somehow track down the Kirigaya's by her face, she'd be damned if she deliberately led him onto the path that would lead to her parents and sister.

"It suits you," he said as he moved further into his aparment, which was still a mess from their...'confrontation,' the night before. "Truly, a beautiful name."

That was the second time he had applied that adjective to her - well, maybe not to her _directly_ , but her kagune and her name were pretty damn close. "What do you want?" She asked, keeping her eyes on him as he moved around her to the couch, giving her a wide berth. Once he sat she moved even further across the room and kept her eyes on his hands and legs, tracking every movement he made. "There's no way you kept me alive out of the goodness of your gunslinging heart."

"That is true," he mused. "I let you live for entirely selfish reasons, Sakura."

She shuddered at the sound of her name coming from Hirano. It was so familiar, he used no honorifics, and somehow managed to make each syllable sound like a music note, or a caress.

He was totally doing it deliberately, the smug human bastard. "Sakura- _san_ ," she spat out at him. "It's rude to speak to a stranger with such familiarity, Katsumi-san." She made sure to stress out how she had addressed him correctly.

"Oh, you can call me Hirano if you want, Sakura-san. I don't mind." As she blinked at his careless rebuttal of her slight, he leant forward in his seat. "Now I'm curious, though - do all ghouls care about manners, or are you simply acting as you see humans do?"

Fury flashed through Sakura. "I cannot speak for all ghouls," she said through gritted teeth. Her eyes burned in response to her anger, but still no kakugan formed. "But I place importance on such things because I was raised as a Japanese citizen, within a Japanese family, _with Japanese ideals_."

"Remarkable," Hirano murmured. "This lends credence to my theory."

" _What_ theory?"

"Oh," he blinked at her as she pulled him from his thoughts. "Most people consider ghouls less than human - animals in human form, really," he said. "Following this commonly accepted theory, ghouls blend into society by imitating what they see in humans, such as courtesy, mannerisms, laguage and emotions, which means they truly feel nothing themselves. If Investigators - Doves, you call them, correct? - follow this logic, it makes it easier for them to kill creatures such as yourself that sound and look human, for the most part, with a clean conscience."

Sakura scowled. "Well, I'm glad it's easier on _them_."

Hirano held up his hands in surrender. "I meant no offense," he reassured her. "But my theory - I believe that ghouls come from a different strain of humanity entirely, and they've evolved over time. I haven't been able to properly establish my theory due to one thing - a lack of live RC cells, which I believe hold the key." He grinned. "And this is where you and your - how did you put it? - ah, yes, 'continued existence' come in," he said. "How would you feel about becoming my research partner?"

 __part.03__

"Sakura!" Midori's voice was as painfully loud in Sakura's ear as her arms were tight around Sakura's middle. " _Where were you?_ " This last sentence was spoken in what Sakura liked to think of as her 'I'm-going-to- _throttle_ -you' tone.

"I'm sorry I got back so late," Sakura said as she cast her eyes upwards, towards the noonday sun. "There were Doves, and I had to lay low, and I couldn't bring back any food-"

"Hush," Midori whispered, and her arms rose from Sakura's waist to cradle her head gently against her shoulder. "You're safe, little sister, and that's all that matters," she whispered. Her voice broke on the last word and she let out a little sob. "I was so worried," Midori cried. "I thought you were dead!"

"As did your mother and I, Sakura," the sisters' father spoke up from his position at the head of the dining table. "You put this family through quite a lot last night."

"I'm sorry," Sakura whispered in a tone as broken as Midori's had been. "I didn't mean it. I won't let it happen again."

"Damn straight you won't," Midori told her as she pulled back from her and shook her long, dark hair out, black eyes sparkling. "You hungry? Let's eat."

 __part.04__

Sakura tried hard not to tense as Hirano's hand came down, gently, onto her kagune. At the foreign touch, the edges of it, still trapped within it's plasma form, flickered wildly.

Hirano immediately jumped back. Even in this form, the kagune was dangerous - could slice through almost anything, from steel to diamond, so of course human flesh would be no issue.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Sakura chanted miserably, bringing her knees up to her chin as she banished her kagune completely.

Hirano shook her apologies off, but still looked slightly annoyed as he sighed. "Do you not trust me yet, Sakura-chan?" The honorific had been attached to her name a little over a week ago. Considering she was simply calling him Hirano, Sakura felt she had no need to complain - and also, it felt kind of nice to be called that by someone who wasn't a blood relation.

She frowned at his accusation. "I can't help it!" She threw her hands into the air in a _'what-can-you-do?'_ gesture. "It's instinct, okay?"

Hirano's frown deepened, and he took a step closer to her.

The intense, focused look in his eyes as he moved back towards her made her shiver, and it had nothing to do with the chilly air that filled the empty, abandoned warehouse they were 'working' out of. He paused right in front of her, their chests almost touching. "So, you do trust me, then?" He asked, as if seeking confirmation for something he should already know.

"I - yes," Sakura said.

"Then tell me your last name." Hirano's voice was firm and his face was unreadable as he said this.

Sakura's mouth went dry. "I - "

"I mean, you trust me, right? So it shouldn't be all that big a deal."

She swallowed, and felt sweat break out all over he skin as she attempted to avoid looking anywhere but at the man who was currently taking up pretty much her entire bubble of personal space. "Kirigaya," she whispered, still not looking at him.

Hirano's hand caught her chin, and turned her head so she faced him. "Sakura Kirigaya," he said to her, voice low and serious, "Is a beautiful name."

And then he was kissing her.

Sakura would be lying if she said she hadn't flailed a bit - she had never been kissed before, and certainly hadn't expected her first kiss to come from a human - Hirano _knew_ she had devoured his kind, and would continue to do so, knew that the meat she had eaten earlier was most definitely _not_ beef or pork -

...and yet, he was still kissing her, gently at first, but then more insistently.

And as Sakura relaxed into his embrace and responded, as she thought _this is nice_ , her kagune erupted from her back like the flaming wings of a phoenix.

 _Ah_ , she thought. _Hirano planned this to make me react_. The thought hurt more than she would've thought, which baffled her. She and Hirano were just friends - if that -

\- and he was still kissing her, seemingly uncaring of the fact that the objective of this experiment had been reached. Unhooking her arms from where they had wound themselves as around his waist somehow, she placed her hands on his shoulders and gave a gentle _push_.

" _Sakura_ ," he said frantically, breathlessly, as he tightened his hold on her and leant back in.

Sakura's arms locked into position, holding him away from her as she leaned back, kagune flaring and unfurling in what was either a warning to stay back or a desire for him to once again come closer - even Sakura herself couldn't tell.

Hirano blinked - his trademark that Sakura had, at somepoint, begun to find endearing.

The warehouse was silent except for the sound of their heavy breathing - at least until Sakura broke it. "What," she said, " _the hell was that_." Her tone was flat, not a question but a demand.

"Something I've been wanting to do for a while now," Hirano said solemnly. "Sakura - Sakura Kirigaya - every part of you is beautiful, inside and out, and I love you."

 __part.05__

"No, Hirano, I will not introduce you to my family. Before I even got out the words _my boyfriend_ , you'd be dead, and as my father butchers you into portions my sister and mother would be discussing if it would be best to roast you or have you raw."

Hirano blinked. "You're exaggerating," he said. "You love me, and I'm sure your family will, too."

"No, Hirano, just - just _no_." Sakura spoke with a tone of finality as she turned back towards the microscope. "So, what are you working on here?"

Hirano grumbled, knowing a subject change when he saw one - and it wasn't exactly like Sakura had _tried_ to be subtle - but, as she had suspected, he couldn't pass up an opportunity to talk about his work. "RC suppressant," he said. "There is a version we use in the labs to, uh, 'retire' quinques - it doesn't kill the RC cells but it slows down their vibrations, locking them into a dormant state until reactivated with a specific catalyst. When it was first developed, people theorised it could be used to supress a ghoul's RC count to the point where they would no longer need to feed on humans - since a ghouls genome is identical to a humans in every way except for RC levels, lowering the cell count would therefore make them human, right?"

Sakura nodded to show she understood.

"Well, not exactly. Whatever the exact split that differentiates human from ghoul is, it is an incredibly small, incredibly delicate line to balance on, and the test subjects from that experiment went catatonic before dying. However, if I can adjust it to match the acceptable levels for live testing..." he trailed off, but Sakura could easily pick up his train of thought.

"You could develop a cure," she breathed out, and tried to ignore the hope that suddenly welled up inside her. Unlike some other ghouls, she had never been ashamed about what she was - had never reveled in it, true, but hadn't raged against the world due to the fact that she had been born a literal maneater. But now, after almost a year with Hirano, getting to know him, _loving_ him, she wanted what humans had - a marriage, a home, a _family_. And she wanted them with _him_.

Hirano had this uncanny sense of being able to pick up her thoughts because he sent her a slight smile and said, "Sakura Kirigaya, you are beautiful just the way you are." The corners of his eyes crinkled. "There is nothing on this earth that could cure you, because there is nothing wrong with you that needs curing in the first place."

 __part.06__

Midori watched with wide eyes as Sakura pulled out a key and opened up the doors to the warehouse Sakura was rapidly beginning to think of as hers and Hirano's 'place.'

"Is this were you've been disappearing too?" Midori's voice, filled with curiosity, echoed eerily throughout the mostly empty building. "What've you been up to in here?"

Sakura tried not to tense. Her sister was a koukaku type, and had far more strength, endurance and offenisve capabailities then Sakura did. However, the younger of the two was far faster, so if Midori made one move towards Hirano that she didn't like, they could be gone within seconds.

There were certain levels to the inhuman capabilities of ghouls. Some could barely surpass human. As for Sakura, she was abysmal in pretty much all catergories, except for her speed and regenerative abilities, the latter in which she was just slightly above average, and the former in which she could possibly surpass Hermes himself. Midori was a good example of an 'all-rounder,' who had good abilities in all catergories, nothing below average. Speed was the only card within Sakura's deck that could outplay her elder sister and she planned to make full use of it if worse came to worse.

At that moment, Midori tensed, and Sakura knew why - Hirano had rounded the desk that had previously kept him hidden and was approaching them.

Over the past month, Hirano had not relented on his insistence that he meet Sakura's family - that he meet the rest of the Kirigaya's. Sakura had, albiet reluctantly, agreed to let him meet with Midori, and Midori alone, to gauge how her sister, and therefore her probably also her parents, would react.

"This is Hirano Katsumi," she made introductions. "My boyfriend."

Midori made a funny wheezing sound that might have been a gasp. Her beautiful face, framed with her dark hair styled in what was considered a 'hime cut' paled drastically, and another strangled sound forced its way out of her throat.

Sakura and Midori had always been close, and it was a fairly simple thing for Sakura to read her sister's thoughts - _a human._

But, for all the shock she must be feeling, Midori was Midori, and her natural playfulness made itself evident. "Ohayou, Katsumi-kun," she greeted with closed eyes, a smile, and a head tilt. "It's nice to meet you." Though it wouldn't be obvious to those who did not know Midori, there was a fair amount of venom in those words, and Sakura winced. Hirano managed to pick up on her sister's ire, but instead of finding someway to mollify her, he instead smiled back at her just as 'sweetly.'

A deep foreboding grew within Sakura.

"Ohayou," Hirano said back to Midori before smirking, " _Onee-san_."

Midori, who until then had been pale, went extremely red, and alarm filled Sakura as her sister's kakugan flooded her eyes and a crackling sound announced the opening of her kakuhou.

Sakura sent Hirano a despairing look as she activated her own hunting organ before throwing herself in front of the human idiot she had claimed as her own.

Midori paused. "Sakura," she growled a warning.

"No," Sakura insisted. "Nee-san, I love him."

This was not the first Sakura had spoken those words, but it was the first time they had been filled with such certainty, and something in her voice must have reached her sister, because her kakugan faded and she relaxed from her fighting stance. "You love him?" Midori ascertained.

Sakura nodded, firmly. "I do."

 __part.07__

Hirano watched as Sakura paced. "How could this have happened?" she muttered. "We were careful. _How_?"

The irate ghoul sent a glare Hirano's way and the human understood that she wasn't being rhetorical. However, the best answer he could give her was a shrug. Informing her that birth control was never one-hundred-percent guaranteed to work probably wouldn't go down well.

"I can't be pregnant," she said in a panicked tone. "I just can't be."

 __part.08__

Unions between human and ghoul were dangerous.

The children born of these unions were not a blending of both worlds, but were, rather, the 'perfect' predator, having a ghouls strength, regenerative abilities, but with a far smaller RC count, allowing them to pass for human much, much easier than their fully ghoul kin.

And their existence was a tragedy, from the very moment of their conception.

Human women who fell pregnant to ghoul men would have to commit one of the most ultimate taboos humanity had employed over the millenia - cannabalism - to keep her child healthy. It was easier on mother's who had already been born a ghoul, for human flesh was already the only staple in their diet, except for coffee.

Within the third month of her pregnancy, the smell of blood and flesh made Sakura nauseous, and the taste made her physically ill. As Midori and Hirano hovered worriedly over her, her parents reassured them that it was perfectly normal for the stomach to be delicate during pregnancy, even for ghouls, and Sakura would soon gt her appetite back.

Within the first week of the fourth month of her pregnancy, Sakura was craving ice-cream.

And when she ate it, it went down just fine.

 __part.09__

When Sakura held Kazuto in her arms for the very first time, she fell in love.

The past nine months had been hard on all of them - on her sister, her parents, and especially poor Hirano - but now, holding her tiny, beautiful son in her arms, it was all worth it.

As she looked up at the two people who had been with her during her birth, her most important people, she smiled. Midori smiled back at her before turning adoring eyes onto her nephew.

Hirano leant down to press a kiss gently to her forehead, before repeating the action with their infant son. "Kazuto Kirigaya," he said seriously. "Is a beautiful name."

"A strong one, too," Midori glanced up from Kazuto long enough to say her piece before turning back to the baby and cooing at him once again.

Sakura blinked - a habit she was sure she'd picked up from Hirano. "Kirigaya?" She asked. "Not Katsumi?"

Hirano shook his head, and Sakura was sure she could see a deep sadness in his eyes. "We can't register him under my name," he told her gently. "It would raise too many questions; I still work for the CCG, remember?"

Yes, of course Sakura remembered, she wasn't an idiot, but her - what exactly were they now? - her Hirano (yes, that would work) had just reminded her of something very important they had to do. So, even though it quite literally felt like the hardest thing she would ever have to do, she placed her son down on the bed before scrambling far away from him and dragging a reluctant Midori with her.

They had been planning this test for months - ever since they realised that Kazuto's presence within Sakura's womb was allowing her to digest human food; more than that, was making her _crave_ it.

Carefully, Hirano held one of his RC bullets just above their child. If it activated, he was a ghoul. If not...well, if not...

Sakura's hand clenched into fists as she tried to hold back tears. The bullet lay dormant, still ad inactive against her son.

Midori whistled. "A halfling more human than ghoul," she whispered. "Never heard that one before."

Sakura tasted blood as her teeth tore through her lips, and she whimpered.

Hirano nodded. "Technically, much like blue eyes, when it comes to human-slash-ghoul hybrids, humanity should be recessive and the ghoul side should be dominant, much like brown eyes. For something like this to happen...it must be an incredibly rare mutation, and we have no idea what that could mean for Kazuto's health later in life - and I mean both physical and mental, here." He yanked at his hair in a mix of despair and frustration. "Hell, for all I know this could affect his lifespan. Or it could do absolutely nothing at all. _I just don't know_ , and it's not like there's a manual for this!"

At his father's shout, Kazuto, her precious son, burst into tears, and she was at his side in an instant, her speed that of a mother, rather than an ukaku type. "Hey, it's okay," she soothed. "I've got you, mummy's got you." He quietened fast in his mother's arms and was soon fast asleep.

Midori grinned. "Look at you, Kaa-san," she said with a wink. She then sighed dramatically. "My baby sister, all grown up."

Hirano's eyes showed Sakura that he was somewhere rather far away. "What are you thinking?" She asked quietly, stepping closer to him.

"Hmm? Oh, just that half ghouls are normally ghouls with human tendencies right? So, what if Kazuto is a human with ghoul tendencies?"

Both Midori and Sakura blinked. "Meaning?" they asked in unison.

"Well, I suspect his RC count would be higher than the average human, yet nowhere near even your lowest ghoul; maybe enough to give him faster regeneration than most humans, or could reflexes or even an aptitude for athletics - my point is that our son could be fine. He could get most of the good parts of being a ghoul, even if watered down a bit, without any of the - "

Here, Hirano broke off.

"Go on," Midori said, brows raised. "What was that you were going to say? 'Without any of the bad parts?'" If possible, her eyebrows hiked their way even further up her face.

"I was going to say 'hardships,'" Hirano informed her diplomatically.

Sakura tuned them out and brought her son up to her face so she could nuzzle against him. "My precious Kazuto," she murmured. "I'll never let anything happen to you."

[||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||]

 _"When the hope of morning starts to fade in me,_  
 _I don't dare let darkness have it's way with me._  
 _And the hope of morning makes me worth the fight,_  
 _I will not be giving in tonight."_

[14 YEARS LATER]

 **_part.01_**

 _"' -Hi there! Time for this week's MMO Stream. You just saw a promo of today's featured game, and this is what last week's launch day looked like! Can you guess what everyone's waiting in line for?Sword Art Online!- '"_

A boy with dark hair and eyes sat in the chair in front of his computer, listening to the stream with half focus. In his hands he held a magazine he found much more interesting - even if only for the interview with Akihiko Kayaba.

"Hey, I'm off to practice now," Suguha's voice was muffled by his closed door. Kazuto Kirigaya turned in his seat towards the door his sister stood behind for a moment, before turning back to his computer. Sugu, a full-blooded ghoul with sense he could never hope to reach, much less surpass, would have been able to hear his chair move in acknowledgement.

Apparently, though, she wanted more, as she continued with a, "See you later, okay?" Her voice trailing into a question rather than a statement.

Kazuto sighed. He could sense Suguha hovering by his door for a second longer before she was gone - and as he raised his eyes to the window, she was already exiting the family property and turning onto the road, the speed a benefit of her being an ukaku type, just like Kazuto had been told his birth mother was.

Sugu still wasn't aware that they were cousins, rather than siblings. Though Kazuto was only half a ghoul while both her parents were full ghouls, she just supposed that her mother had had a fling with a human before meeting her dad, or somthing along those lines. Midori Kirigaya never talked about her sister, Kazuto's mum, and neither did Grandfather - in fact, it was almost as if she had never existed. If Kazuto hadn't snooped around in the family records he never would have known the truth of his birth, or that his parents had died in a car crash on the way to the Kirigaya house when Midori had gone into labour with Sugu, and that he had somehow miraculously survived the crash.

Grandfather had been...less than pleased. It was a commonly accepted fact that human-ghoul hybrids were meant to be the pinnacle of evolution for the ghoul species; yet Kazuto was pretty much completely human. When the CCG did routine sweeps through the schools, his RC count was rather high, but it still fell within human parameters. He was ashamed that one of his family had birthed something so weak, helpless, and reliant on others - Grandfather's words, not Kazuto's - and once it had become clear that he would never raise himself up any higher than from what he was now, Granfather had barred him from the dojo, and begun to work poor Sugu into the ground.

It had been the spark that drove many of the screaming matches between Midori and her father.

Since finding out that his mother was his aunt, and that Suguha was his cousin rather than his sister, he had grown distant from the woman that had raised him with an abundance of love and adoration, and distant from the girl who was only a year younger than he was, but still looked up to him like he held all the wisdom of the world because he was her onii-chan. He hadn't drifted away from them deliberately, but the truth had formed a wall between him and Midori, and until Sugu knew the truth that wall would stand between them, too.

Kazuto stood from his chair and made his way to his bed, where he positioned the NerveGear onto his head before lying down, and smiling.

 _Soon_ , he thought, _I'll be back in that world_.

"Link...Start!"

 **_part.02_**

Suguha was working her way through another repetition of a form that had been giving her some trouble when the man in the buisness suit and carrying a briefcase walked into the dojo and, with a whispered sentence, pulled Tohru-sensei aside, where they had a hushed, hurried conversation.

She froze for a second before coming back to her senses and returning her attention to her form. Though the man was professionally dressed and carried a briefcase, he was most definitely not a Dove - no scent of RC hung about him and his body was the body of a paper pusher, not a fighter. She was fine, for now.

"Sugu?" Tohru-sensei called for her. "Could you come over here for a second, please?"

Her bamboo sword swung down hard one final time before Sugu relaxed her body. Holding the sword down and to the side as she crossed the matts to the other side of the room where her teacher and the man stood, she was relaxed, but prepared to fight at any moment if she needed to.

The man standing with Tohru-sensei bowed formally to her once she reached them, and instinctively, Suguha bowed back. "This is Kikuoka Seijirou-san," Tohru-sensei introduced the man. "He is a part of the, uh, _very_ recently formed 'SAO Taskforce'. He is the agent that has been assigned to the Kirigaya family, and you are the only one he has been able to get a hold of so far."

Suguha blinked. Literally none of what her teacher had just said made sense. "Ess-Ay-Oh?" She questioned; it sounded familiar - hadn't her brother been talking about this the other night when he ate his dinner? "Some gaming thing?"

Seijirou-san tilted his head at her before his unreadable yet solemn expression broke into a smile. "I am surprised you do not know. I thought this 'gaming thing' was all the rage at the moment."

She shrugged. "I've never really been into gaming," she confided. "But now I'm confused - just what does this have to do with my family?"

Seijirou-san's face grew solemn once again. "Ah," he said. "You see, the developer of the game, Akihiko Kayaba, engineered a rather vicious piece of code into the game and the NerveGear's hardware. It saddens me to say this, but as of now, your brother is trapped inside a death game."

 **_part.03_**

In the panic that ensued from Kayaba's announcement, Kirito managed, somehow, to keep a clear head. "Klein!" He called to the man he had been helping earlier, who's in-game avatar's face had been close enough to his IRL one that he was recognisable. When the red-head, who seemed to be close to giving into the panicking pack mentality of the rest of the players turned to him, he jerked his head to the side of the square and made a break for the relative 'freedom' of an alleyway.

"Okay," the fourteen year old boy spoke to his elder as if he was the oldest between them, once they were within the quiet and dark of his chosen alley. "I'm heading out right now, to the next village," Kirito continued on, carefully gauging Klein's reaction to his words. Since the moment Akihiko Kayaba had made his announcement, plans and means of survival had been formulating within Kazuto Kirigaya - now Kirito in this death game of SAO - he had been brought up within a ghoul family and knew that keeping a cool head was the only way to survive. The plan that made the most sense at the current time was to become stronger - _the strongest_ \- and grind his way through the levels before everyone else got the same idea. Akihiko Kayaba was a bona fide, certified genius and it showed not only in his technology but in the formulation of his gameplay, battle and leveling system.

From what Kirito had read, and had learned firsthand through his experiences in the beta, you could not grind more than ten levels above the floor number you were on without extreme difficulties. The Cardinal system was an extremely sophisticated AI that kept a close eye on spawn rates in direct concordance with player levels, and since SAO was a game that had a heavy focus on PvP even if it was not explicitly stated before becoming a death game, once the 'top players' had been established from a pool of maybe one thousand or so, spawn rates and the amount of EXP from each successful kill would drop for each mob, floor by consectutive floor. It was a great system when the game had been all about leaderboards and fun. Now, however, it was a flaw in the system that could get them all killed unless they started leveling up, and fast.

Klein's face flickered slightly with an emotion Kirito was annoyed to find he couldn't read. The NerveGear's facial motion capture technology was incredibly adavanced, but it was not capable of emulating a perfectly rendered human face with all the motions that came with it, able to aesthetically reproduce their own faces onto their avatar bodies but not gain the full motion of cheeks and eyes a real body used to emote. Due to these inconsistencies, and the fact that he could gain no sense of panic or otherwise from Klein due to the technology's inability to showcase breathing, sweat or blood pressure, the lessons beaten into him by his mother - his aunt - Midori - on when to march forward with your own ideas or _back the fuck off_ , in her exact words, were useless. Granted, those lessons had been because he was the weak, human link raised within a community of ghouls, but Klein was a scared and trapped human, and he could be just as dangerous, even if the『Town of Beginnings』was, technically and literally, a [Safe Zone].

Well, there was nothing for it but to say what he had to say and leave the rest up to Klein.

"I want you to come." Kirito hoped Klein couldn't hear anything beyond the cool logic that lay behind this decision in his voice; hoped that he couldn't hear the frightened truth that was a fourteen-year-old boy raised by monsters that loved him and were always there for him, and was now trapped all alone in a world full of people that would quite possibly kill him as soon as - or sooner - as help him.

Most people would have a brighter outlook on the power of humanity and how they could band together. Kirito was not most human beings, was not even fully human, and even if he had been - after being brought up by ghouls he might not consider himself as such. He had seen the darkness humanity hid as some turned against their own kind and hunted down prey _for_ ghouls, had seen the hatred hid by righteousness that the Doves wielded as surely as their own quinque, that thickened in their veins like poison, blinding them to the truth that was not all ghouls were monsters. Being trapped in a game - no, a _world_ like this one would bring out the best in a lot of people, yes, but it would also smother the light and ignite the darkness in others, who would revel in a world with no rules or formal law enforcement. In fact, anyone who tried to control the panicking masses would more than likely be seen as a tyrant as, even though things had just gotten a lot more serious, VR gamers in a VR world would have themselves firmly stuck in the mindset they all shared, despite their differences and their now being entrenched firmly in the midst of a primal fear and panic -

\- the mindset that ran along a singular line of thought; _within this world I am free to do as I please and no-one can stop me, without any repurcussions._ No doubt one of the first things some people would do would be simply continue as if nothing had happened and this was all still a game, the missing [Log-Out] button just a glitch the GM's would soon fix, acting as if this would make it true.

Klein's face didn't change for a moment, and then in a move that Kirito was partly sure Akihiko Kayaba had programmed into the game deliberately, with no gradual lifting or falling of his facial features, it did, like the older man had thrown a switch or selected an emotional template from a list that had automatically updated to his face.

"If what he said is true, and I think it is," Kirito continued cautiously, "the only way we're going to survive is by making ourselves as strong as possible." _As fast as possible, too_ , he tacked on in his mind, not saying it out loud yet as he still couldn't be sure of Klein's reaction. "In a game such as this one, a MMORPG, everything that makes the game world run and the player's efforts worthwile - money, EXP points, drops from mobs and quest rewards - there's only so many to go around, they're a finite resource. Normally servers would be reset, updated, or new ones created as demand would apply, but if Kayaba plans to keep all of the players minds logged in permanently, that won't happen. Everything in Aincrad that would make survival possible, let alone easier, is going to have to find a place between ten-thousand people all desperate to survive and get home themselves. If we're going to live, we have to stay ahead of the curve. The fields around『Beginnings』will be picked clean soon - to make it easier on ourselves we should head to the next town."

Already, Kirito was bracing himself for disapointment. Something about the set of Klein's shoulders had him wary.

Klein hesitated before finally speaking. "Well...thanks, but...you know those friends I was telling you about? We stood in line for a whole night to buy this, and..." he trailed off before his facial expression morphed into one of anguish. It felt artificial and Kirito theorised that the Cardinal system had a subroutine that monitered the nerve reading from the players facial data and applied the movements each tried to make onto the closest emotional template it had. There were probably hundreds, but on the scale of a game such as this one the only real differentiation between these would probably be female and male, thus making the expressions one made either overly dramatic or underwhelming - either way, they seemed artificial.

"They're back at the plaza, somewhere..."Klein continued, now mostly speaking to himself, it almost seemed. "And...I can't leave them." He sounded apologetic, truly and genuinely so, and even as Kirito's eyes watered a bit (a fact he would later vehemently deny) as Cardinal read and made real his desire to cry (a sensation that felt weird as though he knew, intellectually, that he was crying, he could feel no burn behind his eyes or wetness on his cheeks, just a slight pressure and change in temperature on his virtual skin and a blinking status icon in his HUD that was blue and had an icon of a teardrop on it. [Focusing] on the status icon revealed it was called [True Anguish] and the blue, to Kirito's knowledge, meant that it was a status ailment that was either benign or had no effect beyond aesthetic. In the beta there had been a mob who, when aggro'ed at a very specific level or time, had a one in one hundred chance of hitting a player with a status ailment that horrifically disfigured their avatar. It had no effect on HP or EXP, but it was entirely permanent, not even respawning succeeding in getting rid of the little blue icon and all of its connotations. It had eventually been agreed upon by the beta community as a whole that the only way around it was to start from scratch with an enitrely new account), he understood what Klein meant and was glad that the guy was so loyal to his friends, even if it hurt.

However, as Kirito exchanged his [Focus] on his HUD from the blinking status symbol as it faded and onto the top left corner, where his [Life Bar] resided. [Focusing] in on it brought up a sensation similar to using a mouse, except with his brain and eyes, and with a metaphorical ' _click_ ' Kirito had summoned the bar from it's minimised position in his peripheral vision to the fron and center of his attention. It was fully green at the moment, but as he [Focused] less on the encouraging colour of his bar and more on the numbers that lay, written out in white beneath it, he knew that could change at any moment.

[ **HP 250/250 | Lv: 01]**

That was all his life was at this moment - a measly two-hundred-and-fifty hit points, barely enough to get him through three consecutive fights in the beta, not without [Heal Crystals] or rest in a [Safe Zone]. Not for the first time, Kirito cursed Kayaba's decision to not include spells within Sword Art Online, before wondering if maybe he hadn't done it to make it harder on the players trapped in his death game.

 _If it were just Klein,_ he thought both firmly and sadly, having made his decision just as Klein had done. _But...two more? Or even_ one _more?_ Even though Kirito told himself this, he was conflicted.

With his head bowed as it was, Kirito couldn't see it, but Klein's face softened. For a minute Kirito's perfectly composed mask had slipped, and Klein could see the scared kid hiding beneath the stoic man. "Sorry," he spoke up in a gentle voice; Kirito's head jerking up as he looked at Klein with wide eyes. "Can't ask a guy I just met to risk his life for a bunch of _strangers_ now, can I?" Klein almost said _kid_ but managed to restrain himself, thinking that not only would it not be appreciated, it would probably be slightly hypocritical, considering the fact that Kirito, somehow, seemed more...mature, no, worldly, then he did.

He smiled at Kirito. "So, don't worry about me. Just get your ass to the next village."

Kirito couldn't help it. IRL one could control their facal expressions, if only a little. Here, in SAO, in Aincrad, even if the expressions looked fake, you had no chance of hiding them as the Cardinal system picked up the slightest nerve impulses in the body and transferred them directly to the corresponding point on the player avatar without permission or chance to control it. Once a movement or emotion had been dedicated to by the systems musculature translation subroutines it would be done, and in accordance with this, Kirito's face fell.

"I'll be fine!" Klein reassured him in a tone so casual Kirito almost felt like punching him for being so flippant. "Last game I played I ran a guild, so I'm super prepared for this one! And with all the stuff you've taught me, I'll get by, no sweat - you'll see."

Kirito 'tch'ed, and tried not to show his fear and sadness. "Okay," he sighed out as he turned from Klein. "If that's what you want, I'll get going..." Hesistantly, he paused before cautiously saying, "But if you're ever in a jam, message me." He didn't lead it up into a question, or speak forcefully to make it a demand. He spoke softly, quietly, just loud enough that the words could not be denied their existence. This was an offer, and Klein seemed to understand that, because as Kirito turned his back again, the red-head called his attention back.

His voice was full of hesitance, and he stumbled over his words, but he finally managed to form some resemblance of a sentence, and Kirito was incredibly glad that the Cardinal system was not advanced enough to pick up the embarassed blush that was surely on his face and transfer it to his avatar.

"Yeah," Kirito agreed with Klein. "You look better like that, too."

With that last piece of bravado, Kirito turned and _pushed_ off, glad for the game mechanics and empty streets. The NPC vendors that had been out in abundance earlier in the day were gone, and Kirito forced his brain to shut down, _to not think about it_.

He pushed himself, harder, faster, and though it literally was all in his mind, he swore he could feel himself speed up, even faster than his meager stats, mere level one numbers, would allow.

He wondered, not for the first time, if this speed was what it felt like to be an ukaku type ghoul, like his birth mother had been. Being raised in a family of super-humanly able people had not done wonders for Kazuto's self esteem, but all he had ever truly wanted was to know what it felt like to _be_ an ukaku type, like his sister, like his mother. That was why he focused his characters build on a divide of stats - each level up gained five points to be alloted into a stat column; two each level went to **STR** , two more into **AGI** , and the final point into the **VIT** column, a tried and true formula which had always served him well, and was most definitely not open to experimentation within this particular game, where one misplaced point could lead to the horrible and final words [You Died] floating in front of his eyes with an almost mocking note in the typed text. Though, the SAO death alert was, quite simply [You Are Dead], which was less mocking and more flat in delivery.

He reached the edge of the『Town of Beginnings』and a small, pink alert flashed in his HUD. Slowing for a moment, Kirito [Focused].

 **『** **You are about to leave the** _ **Town of Beginnings**_ **』**

That...was new. Pushing another burst of speed into his legs and rushing through the town's gates and into the fields surrounding, Kirito actively forced himself not to wonder about this new feature that differed from his experience in the beta. That was something Kazuto would do, and he could not _afford_ to be Kazuto right now.

If there was one thing that Kirito had learned, growing up among ghouls, it was that they were not monsters. But simultaneously, they were. It was almost like a second personality they developed, the mask they wore becoming a trigger for another 'them,' like a switch thrown in their minds. This is what allowed them to do the things they had to do, to survive.

Kazuto Kirigaya was the token human of his family. Of the ghoul community. He had never needed any mask except that of his humanity. Had never needed the strength another persona would offer him.

But he did now. He had no leather or wood to wear across his face - his mask was in no way that actualised. No, the mask he needed wore his own face and body, but what [Kirito] could offer Kazuto within this game was far greater than an actual mask. When the mask came off, the trigger released and the person was retured to their original personality. He would not wear Kirito like a mask, but rather a second skin, would _become_ him until he either died or beat this death game.

As a sound like shattering glass mixed with the old internet dial up tone came from in front of him and a low level [Dire Wolf] mob spawned in repsonse to a player ID, he unsheathed his sword with a soft snicker-snack and held it horizontal to his body as he did not slow his pace down any, a roar building in his throat.

 _I can do this_ , he thought viciously, attacking himself as much as the wolf type mob he had just sliced through, activating the simple [Sword Skill] [Horizontal] and managing to kill it with one hit, _I can beat this_ , he thought as he dismissed the window that popped the the center of his HUD, alerting him of EXP gained from his kill. This mob had dropped nothing but poor quality [Dire Wolf Steaks], but his inventory was empty, and when he got to the『Town of Riverdale』which was the second town of Aincrad's first floor, he was going to need all the items to trade in he could possibly get.

 _I will not let this world beat me!_

And then, screaming his frustration, his anger and his grief, and all of his fear, into the sky, the one who would come to be known as Kirito took the 'him' that 'he' had always known, and ran him through as surely as he had the mob.

On the sixth of November, 2022, the boy known as Kazuto Kirigaya died. His body, lying comatose as his sister cried and panicked over him, his parents nowhere to be seen, underwent no physical change, but inside, in his mind, steel replaced what had once been soft within him, and parts that had always been open slammed shut, not allowing anyone inside.

And in the wake of this young boys death, another was born, like a [Phoenix] rising from the ashes of it's previous incarnation.

Kirito, a solo player born of the harsh world of Aincrad, took a deep breath, and stepped forward into his new world.

 **_part.04_**

The world was dull and blurred around Suguha Kirigaya. Everything was numb.

This was, in part, due to the RC suppressants she had been partaking of regularly over the past month. Before her uncle, Hirano, had passed away, he had dedicated his life and time to developing a drug that would allow the Kirigaya's to pass through RC detectors as human, even if only for a while. However, he had died before he could perfect the formula and what they had been left with was a recipe that was a dangerous half-measure at best, to be used only in emergenices and preferably not at all.

Suguha was the one in her family who had used it more often. She always carried vials of the stuff with her, for every now and then the CCG would do sweeps through the schools to check for ghouls. Whenever she got wind of them, rather than running or hiding, she would down the suppressant and suffer through the rest of the day lethargically, the world around her moving slowly, as if through molasses.

This was how humans experienced the world, without the hypersensitivty of ghouls, and it mildly horrified Suguha. It was an experience she hated having to do even a few times a year. But over the past month, since the launch date of Akihiko Kayaba's death game and Kazuto's consequent captivity within the virtual world, she was constantly dosing herself up so as to get through the RC detectors that stood at multiple access points throughout the hospital they had interred him in.

Her mother was growing concerned about her liberal, almost reckless usage of the suppressant that was very quickly becoming her drug, for without it she would not be able to see her brother. Apparently, one of the side effects of the formula was that it could permanently damage RC cell production and cripple Suguha, bringing down her cell count, strength, speed and senses to human, but having no effect on her hunger, which would remain the same.

 _'Good,'_ Suguha had retorted to her mother in anger when she had been informed of this. _'At least it would make it easier to visit Kazuto.'_

Her mother had been incredibly stricken by her words, which looking back made Suguha guilty, though at the time it had mst definitely been what she had set out to do. Except for those initial days, where her presence had been required to insure Kazuto's safety and rights, she had not visited, preffering not to take the supressants. It had been the cause of a violent, screaming argument between the two that would have gotten the cops involved if the neighbours hadn't already known of the troubles they were having with Kazuto comatose and possibly dead at any moment.

And this argument had led to the reveal of something Suguha had never wanted to know, and _that_ , more than any drug ever could, was what was making her numb.

Kazuto Kirigaya was not her brother. She was not his sister, they did not share a mother. His father had been human, which partly explained his lack of ghoul traits, something that had concerned Suguha for years, no matter how much her mother said _'don't worry about it.'_

The door opened; it took a moment for Suguha's fuzzy brain to register it. "Ah," she said, blinking slowly as her mind tried to catch up to her eyes and her mouth. "Seijirou-san?"

The glasses-wearing man looked harried. Suguha had soon learnt that though he was the man assigned to the Kirigaya's, the Kirigaya's were not his only assignment. He had over a dozen other SAO players under his direct care, and by default, their families.

Sugu had seen him frequently over the past month, and each time he looked a little more haggard, a bit more worn down.

He blinked at her words, much like she had just a minute earlier, and his eyes seemed to clear as he registered her presence. Like a switch had been thrown, the slumped posture and defeated look he had held upon himself when he entered the room vanished, and he straightened, a smile as bright as the sun flashing across his face as he tilted it backwards.

The light on the roof of Kazuto's room glinted against his glasses and for a second they whitened out, making a chill run down Suguha's spine. For all his smiles and jokes, and for all she had dismissed him on that first day, this man was not one to be trifled with. Her mother had told her tales of the strongest and most dangerous Investigators around, and one such man had been Amon Koutarou. He had been around when Tokyo was still split into wards, and had vanished after one of the biggest skirmishes between man and ghoul on Japanese soil. This had been before Suguha was born, even if not by very long, and she had never met Amon Koutarou, but the stories she heard of him gave her the same chills and sense of _dangerdangerdanger_ that Kikuoka Seijirou's very presence gave her - these were two men that had been cut of the same cloth.

"Ah, if it isn't Sugu-chan!" The second smile he sent her way was as bright as it was fake, and she had to resist the urge to snarl at him, kakugan active. With her brain slow like this, her control was subpar compared to usual.

"Seijirou-san," Suguha said cautiously. "What, exactly, are you doing here?"

"Well, I don't suppose your mother is around, huh, Sugu-chan?" His smile became sly and his eyes shone with a dark light. "I see she hasn't signed in at all since the first week."

Suguha shook her head. "My mother finds it difficult to see Kazuto in this state," she said calmly, refusing to rise to this man's bait. "If you need to talk to her, you have our number, and our address."

"Hai, hai," Seijirou-san allowed dismissively. "Ara, but your brother is difficult." He stared hard at Kazuto as he said this, and a terrible feeling swelled within Suguha.

"What do you mean by that?" she snapped out.

To his credit, Seijirou-san did not react at all, and simply answered her question. "Well, Kirito-kun here is among the first players to fall into the red." He shook his head, and sighed. "Honestly, we were expecting to see this, just not quite so soon."

"What did you just call Kazuto?" Suguha asked, choosing to ignore his second comment for the moment, "And, the red?"

"Ah, the SAO Taskforce has taken to referring to its charges by their 'screen-names.'" Seijirou-san paused, and turned to face her fully. "And a player fallen into the red zone...well, to be blunt: Kirigaya-san, your brother is a killer."

Suguha's world _broke_.

 **_part.05_**

Asuna trembled behind the man - no, boy, he couldn't have been older than her, not with that face - who had saved her.

Saved her, by killing another.

After a week and half, nearly two, spent crying within the『Town of Beginnings』Asuna Yuuki, daughter to two of the strongest Investigators of the CCG of the past generation, and sister to one of the organisations rising stars, had summoned as much as she could of the strength and fearlessness that had been her family's legacy for god only knows how long, and set out for the fields.

VR gaming was something new to her, at least the 'full-dive' aspect of it - a sort of VR simulation had been used at the Academy for as long as she could remember to help trainees grow used, in a round about way, to battles with ghouls. So, after her two week pity party, a thought had occured to her -

\- with all the intensive training her parents (especially her mother) had put her through over the years in preperation for her to enter the CCG as an Investigator once she became of age, she was quite possibly one of the most prepared people trapped in this death world of a 'game.'

So, with this in mind, she had spent her starting funds on a low level rapier, the blade she was most used to in real life, and set out into the world. From what she remembered of playing on consoles when she was younger, raising her levels by killing monsters would have to be the first order of buisness. And so, she left the [Safe Zone] that she had been residing in for the past fortnight with a few thousand terrified other players who were determined not to set foot outside the place that was guaranteed to keep them alive by virtue of the very code woven ino its virtual walls.

Over the next two weeks, Asuna had been fighting her way around the first floor of Aincrad, never straying too far from anyone [Safe Zone]. A kind elderly man, whom she had been startled to realise was an NPC, had informed her that the areas on her map highlighted in pink were [Safe Zones]. All towns were, of course, covered in pink, but Asuna had been shocked to realised that the only town whose entirety was a [Safe Zone] was the main hub,『Town of Beginnings』and the rest of the towns - four in all, scattered across the floor, were sporadically coloured in - Riverdale was pink except for its borders, Laketon was pink in the east but not the west, every part of Aquinas was pink except for the town square, and Marianas was pink in its underground levels, but not its aboveground ones, which had come as a nasty shock to some people.

But there were also sporadially placed pink areas in the open fields - and they only activated when a player ID came within around a kilometre of them. She had found them in some amazing places: one that was on only a certain branch high up in a tree, one that made up the enitrety of a small pond.

An interesting thing about these interspersed 'outer' [Safe Zones] - they had been made with PvP in mind, not PvE, and due to that, once inside one of these [Safe Zones] a player could use their ID number to [Lock] the [Safe Zone]. This would make it impossible for any other player to enter the [Safe Zone] with you, however once you left, all EXP you had gained would be lost, as would the [Safe Zone], forever.

As the elderly looking NPC had informed her of these things, before moving onto how the first floor of Aincrad was the [Floor of Water], and thus would have a [Water] type boss, Asuna thought it was an interesting game mechanic that probably would have been great fun if it were still just a game, but paid it no mind other than that.

That was her first mistake.

After two weeks, roughly, of roaming around Aincrad's 'countryside,' and leveling up, focusing her stats on **AGI** and **VIT** , only throwing a point into **STR** every second level or so, she had felt confident and strong, prepared for anything this world had to throw at her.

That was her second mistake.

So when she heard screams and pleas for help, not far from where she was standing as she waited patiently for a specific mob type that was heavy around these parts with fair EXP rates and average drops to respawn, she didn't think twice as she used her stat given speed to almost _fly_ in the direction, using her eyes to activate her HUD and bring up her map, a trick taught to her by a player in『Town of Beginnings』who had been a beta tester, too scared to go out into the fields herself but more than happy to help out those who did. [No-Hands], as the beta testers had apparently called it was an [Outside System Skill], which had basically been explained to Asuna as a glitch or hole in the coding of the game that wasn't something broken or that needed to be fixed, but rather by exploiting it made gameplay easier.

In a full dive VR enviroment such as this, everything in the HUD was brought up by [Focus]. Most players used the menu and HUD applications seperately so never thought about it, but the Cardinal system was so big and filled with things to do, subroutines upon subroutines, that it didn't always differentiate between things as it should, so whether one used their eyes or hands to [Focus] it didn't matter - it had the same effect.

Her map spiralled through different levels of zooms until she could see her own [Player ID Tag] appear on screen, with another one, someone called [Skaari] up ahead of her, surrounded by a various dark red lights, mobs, with [Amphitrite] at the front.

Asuna swore she could almost feel her blood run cold in that moment. _A named mob_. This would be dangerous. Quite possibly life threatening. A pink area flickered to life on her map - a [Safe Zone]. If she could get herself and whoever Skaari was to it, they would be safe.

She never even considered the possibilty of a trap, or any form of attack from the one she was going to save - they were all in this together, after all, and she had faith in the unity of humanity, partly beause of her upbringing.

That was her third, and almost final, mistake.

She burst into the clearing where a small, slight girl was being pressed back against a tree by the named mob that had shown on her map - a humanoid mob, with the creatures (there was really no other word for them) artfully designed and beautifully rendered, flickering between a solid form and liquid snaking along the ground. When solid, they let off attacks, shooting off what looked like _spells_ at the poor player, which was both ridiculous and unfair, what Asuna wouldn't give for the ability to cast Thundaga right now - but were fixed in place. When they transformd from eerily beautiful women into water, they slithered across the ground, inching forward like a flood. They remained in water form for exactly five seconds before turning solid for exactly thirty, and all their attacks were water based, fitting in with the floor's theme. Now that she had their algorithims down, Asuna prepared to move.

 _Twenty-six, twenty-seven,_ she raised her blade, _twenty-eight, twenty-nine,_ Skaari's HP must have fallen into the red because an alert blinged across Asuna's HUD.

 **『** **A player near you is about to die!** **』**

She gritted her teeth. The beta testers had been shocked and horrifed, just like the rest of them, at this new feature of the fully launched game. It was twisted, it was sadistic, it was cruel, and the only thing missing from it to fully enforce Akihiko Kayaba's status as a monster was a **n.n** on the end.

 _Thirty!_...She had five seconds, and she _acted_.

Skaari's scream cut off into a yelp as Asuna seemed to _flash_ into existence in front of her. Asuna made sure her blade swung through the still liquid mob as she ran over them, and an icon blinking on her HUD informed her that she had drawn aggro.

 _Good,_ she thought, using her eyes to [Focus] and un-equip her rapier and light armour, returning them to her inventory - she couldn't have extra weight making this harder on her. Three seconds left before the mob solidified. They had to _run_ , and _now_ , so Asuna swung Skaari over her shoulder and headed in a _direct_ line for the [Safe Zone], paying close attention to Skaari's [Life Bar]. The younger girl's exact numbers and level weren't visible to Asuna but the bright, blood red colour of her remaining HP was a chilling sight.

Another alert flashed into her sight as the [Safe Zone] entered her line of sight and her [Aggro] status symbol flashed, telling her the mob was in hot pursuit.

 **『** **Player near you is in direct violation of the ethics code! Punish? Yes/No** **』**

Of course - both she and Skaari would have the ethics code turned on, and once two player ID's got within a certain range of eachother outside of fights - and Asuna had no idea how the Cardinal system could tell the difference when it messed up so many other things - it would ask one player if they were being bothered. If the player answered **Yes** the other player would be thrown down by a concussive force that drained a tremendous amount of HP plus doubled falling damage. If the player answered **No** the message would simply blink into existence on the other players HUD and ask their opinon on the matter. Failure to choose an option within thirty seconds led to [Instant Death].

She [Focused] and selected **No** just as they reached the [Safe Zone], which was the shadowed area beneath a large tree, and placed Skaari down. The [Amphitrite] mob milled about the place, now calm as the [Safe Zone] hid their player ID's from it.

"Are you okay, Skaari?" She asked, and turned to face the girl. "We can stay here until your HP has recovered - " she broke off.

Skaari was smiling up at her, and it wasn't a nice smile.

Asuna realised her right hand was raised, two fingers pressed together in the 'traditional' [Focus], and a chilling thought filled her.

"Yes," Skaari mused, and her voice was just as childlike as her face, " _punish_." Her fingers came down on a button only she could see, and a force Asuna had no words to describe blew her backwards, out of the [Safe Zone], and she hit the floor hard. Three alerts popped up simultaneously on her HUD.

 **『** **Your [Life Bar] is in the [Red Zone]** **』**

 **『** **A [Safe Zone] near you has become locked** **』**

And finally, the little orange [Aggro] status icon flickered into existence just under her [Life Bar].

 **[HP 0024/1250 | Lv: 05]**

 _This...is bad_ , she thought. In the real world, she would already be unconscious, if not already dead, or probably wishing she was. Here, in Aincrad, she felt no pain or disorientation - the moment she had landed she had regained her senses. All she felt now was a slow sensation of dread overtaking her body.

Yes, this was very bad. She had no armour or weapon, and in the small time it would take to equip one or both of these things, the [Amphitrite] mob would finish her - she had one chance - to run.

And that was when she met Kirito, and her life, her future, and the way she would come to see the world, changed.

He flew into the area that surrounded the [Safe Zone] like an oversized raven, dressed all in black an wielding a one-handed straight sword, slung casually over his back.

No, not _casually_ , Asuna realised - he was activating a [Sword Skill].

The dark blade of his sword hummed as it began to glow, and when it reached the apex of its charge, before the energy filling the blade could lessen, he _released_ the [Skill].

A diagonal slant cut one [Amphitrite] in half across the middle, a scattering of red polygons emulating blood. A hauntingly realistic scream erupted from the mobs open mouth as she shattered and vanished, and the [Aggro] icon on Asuna's HUD vanished as the mobs focus vanished from her to the one who had slain their sister.

From within the [Safe Zone], Skaari screamed, and Asuna couldn't help but flinch.

However, her attention was focused almost solely on the swordsman who had just entered the fray.

It wsa clear he was skilled with a sword - IRL skilled, not just high leveled. He worked _with_ the system, but not _for_ it, allowing it to complement and strengthen his own moves, without limiting himself in such a way that all he could use _was_ the systems ingrained [Sword Skills].

Though she was well aware that what she was thinking was crazy, Asuna couldn't help it - _that...was over_ way _too soon._

And it was. Each mob was obviously severely underleveled for this guy to go up against, as he was one-shotting each of them with an almost _bored_ look on his face. Within seconds of his arrival, only the last remnants of polygons floating away on a non-existent breeze were proof that the mob had even existed.

"It's the most cowardly type of PKing I can think of," the guy spoke out loud. "Drawing in both mobs and players and let the first finish off the second." Disgust twisted his face. "And if we let you go you'll just do it again."

Three shocks Asuna felt in that moment - one, Skaari had, at some point, left her [Safe Zone]; two, the 'we' the guy had mentioned included _her_ ; three, this guy was aware of the fact that Skaari had left the [Safe Zone], and as she lunged for Asuna with a dagger shining green, _his_ blade swund down and where a second before there had been a girl, another player, there was only polygons.

Asuna gasped in horror. The boy didn't so much as blink.

A beep sounded in the BGM that was everpresent in the back of her head and her HUD _changed_ as an alert flashed up.

 **『** **A player near you just died after reporting an ethics violation with your [Player ID]. As punishment, your status is now [Red]!** **』**

"I...I don't understand," Asuna spoke.

The boy shrugged, and she noticed - the diamond above his head that indicated his player status, that had been green when he first burst into the clearing - it was now orange. "I killed her to save you, and now we're both being punished for it. Don't worry though, you'll be back to [Green] status in a few days."

"A few days in which I won't be able to enter any [Safe Zones]!" She hissed out.

The guy shrugged. "Then stay with me. Us [Red] players have to stick together, you know."

Asuna opened her mouth to angrily give him her opinion on that idea, before he said, "What's your name? Mine's Kirito."

She deflated. "I'm Asuna, Asuna Yuuki."

He gave her a startled look. "Your IRL name?"

She 'hmmphed,' and he seemed to get the message. "Listen, Asuna," he said, fore-going any honorifics, as was the trend with gamers within the VR enviroment, it seemed. "This world is neither friendly nor forgiving, just like the people in it. You can't trust strangers just because they're screaming, because they might just as soon turn their back on you once the screams are coming from _your_ mouth."

"No," she said softly. "People aren't like that, they can't be." This wasn't a naieve statement from a girl who saw no evil, but rather a counter-argument from a girl who thought Kirito was being far too cynical. There was bad in people, yes, and this past month in the game had broken the girl Skaari, and then the darkness in her had blossomed to fill in the cracks, but that can't have been all she was and there were people out there in Aincrad doing _so_ much good.

Kirito stared at her. "I guess we've just lived different lives then." His eyes flickered from one direction to another for the space of a few seconds, and Asuna realised her was [Focusing].

 **『** **[Kirito] wants to form a party with you. Accept? Yes/No** **』**

It was impulsive, probably stupid, and more than likely going to get her killed, but as Asuna stared at the little text box that read **Yes** , all she could do, was [Focus].

[X]

 _'On and on, I wonder what went wrong inside my head,_  
 _I don't have to have the answers but tonight I wish I did.'_

 **_ 01_**  
 __ 02__

[Act01 Omakes]

 __midori's_adventures_in_babysitting__  
Midori Kirigaya, elder sister to one Sakura Kirigaya and now aunt to a small human/ghoul hybrid named Kazuto, panicked.

 _Oh God,_ he was _crying_. And not just tears, but full on wails, and Midori had no idea what to do. Bribery and blackmail hadn't worked. _Chocolate_ hadn't worked, and normally her nephew loved that stuff.

"Kid," she pleaded. "Please, _stop_." If anything he started crying _louder_.

Okay, now she got it. The little monster was doing it to _spite_ her.

"That's it," she growled, picking him up. "I'm putting you _in the bin_."

At that, Kazuto fell silent, which made Midori blink at him. As they stared at one another, he opened his mouth once again, and Midori tensed in preparation.

"Mama." His finger was pointing directly at her face. " _Mama!_ "

Midori giggled. " _No_ , auntie!" She told him in an excited voice. Kazuto was _speaking!_ "Your mama isn't here right now."

"Mama!" he insisted. Midori sighed.

Three months later, Sakura Kirigaya and Hirano Katsumi passed away in a car crash, survived by their infant son.

The next time Kazuto called Midori ' _mama,_ ' she didn't correct him, just simply held him tightly against her, and cried.

 __asuna_ &_kazuto's_first_meeting__  
Asuna sighed and fidgeted in the seat of her father's car she had been placed in.

Today, the CCG, the organisation her parents worked for, and that her brother was training to enter, was doing their routine sweeps through the schools around the city, and she had been dragged along even though she technically wasn't allowed inside.

Thus, car duty for Asuna.

Hopefully she would be freed of her duty soon, though, as kids were being let out now as it was the end of the school day. A pair of dark haired sibling walked past and the girl looked...sick.

Raised as she was, in the family that belonged to her, Asuna found it almost physically impossible to ignore another human being in need. Also, it would get her out of the car.

"Hey!" she called out to the brother as she scrambled down to the sidewalk; he was now supporting his sister like a crutch. "Is she okay?"

The boy jumped, like she had startled him, and Asuna winced as the poor girl was jostled by her brother's movements.

"Yeah," he said...almost _warily_. "She's fine, just tired." A pause, as if he wasn't sure of how to proceed in talking to another person. "Thanks...for, you know asking."

Asuna shook her head. "It was nothing. Anyone would have done the same." As she smiled at him, the boy looked at her with the very definition of a poker face on, before smiling also.

"I'm Kazuto," he said. "And this is my imouto."

" _Sugu_ ," the girl insisted in a mumble against her brother's chest.

"I'm Asuna," she said cheerfully to the siblings. "Asuna Yuuki."

Kazuto raised an eyebrow. "Your full name?"

Asuna shrugged. Voices called out from down the street, and Kazuto turned to see a woman waving wildly from a car. "That's our mother," he said. "See you around,...Asuna."

"Yeah," she smiled softly. "See you around."

Years later, while trapped in the death game of SAO, Kazuto Kirigaya, now known as Kirito, met Asuna Yuuki once again, and her name brought back memories of happier days.

It was with this in mind that Kirito partied with her. This girl was a light in the darkness, a representation of halcyon days gone by, and no matter how hardened he had become, he _yearned_ for that.

He wasn't ready to let go of her. Not just yet.

 **_part.01_**

Klein, Tsuboi Ryotaro, twenty-one years old and still not entirely sure of what he wanted out of life, simply stood still for a moment as he watched the kid's - Kirito's - back fade into the distance.

He couldn't move for a moment, couldn't think. The world, which had seemed frozen around him since that point in which he had realised there was no log out button, had started to sluggishly move again, and so his mind and body had frozen to compensate.

His guild, his friends, the ones he had refused the kid for - they would be waiting for him, he knew, caught between worry and fear that he had been one of the unlucky few to die in the hours since the launch, not knowing that their fatality would be exactly that - fatal; and false reassurances to themselves that because it was Klein, it would be fine, a somewhat clever piece of wordplay, a joke that had travelled over not from the last MMO he'd run on, but from a tabletop campaign he'd run back in high school. It would be the right thing to do, to hunt them down now, before it got much later (or even crazier) out there. Even from this alleyway Kirito had dragged him down, he could hear the panicked screams and shouts echoing from the square, and knew that violence had more likely than not followed the screams of the young girl that had set off the rest of the crowd.

The [Ethics Code] and [Beginnings] status as a [Safe Zone] would protect people from death, and the limiters on the actual, physical technology would stop pain from being felt, but a frenzied mob of people was dangerous, and Klein wasn't going to run the risk of being invited to any duels - even if he'd had a little trouble with the battle system at first, being more used to console and controller than virtual reality, he _had_ read the introduction booklet, and had followed the 'SAO Beta' sub-reddit for any hints on how to make gameplay more fun and exciting for his guild.

There was also his mother's status as a 'Scavenger,' that had helped him grow up with the knowledge that he had to a) always know as much as he could about everything, b) use obfuscating stupidity so people never caught onto to how much of a hidden badass you were, c) if you don't have a distraction, _be_ the distraction. Tsuboi Ryotaro was, by all accounts, an entirely ordinary young man. Red-headed, yes, kind of unusual considering his purely Japanese heritage, but it suited him and his bright personality. He could, he knew, talk almost anyone around to his way of thinking and twist conversations until the original topic was completely forgotten. These skills as a manipulator had not been so useful since he'd been young and cute enough to get away with hanging around the places his mother 'worked,' and once he'd moved away from his mother and his old life, leaving it behind after his second year of middle school, deliberately attempting to lead people into his way of thinking had just made him uncomfortable.

He was not his mother. He was _decidedly_ not his father, and god help him if he ever became one of his cousins, who he _knew_ had been following him lately, and _oh god what if they found him in the hospital_ \- Kayaba Akihiko had said he'd disabled them for two hours so the players could be moved into proper care facilities, they'd obviously be calling up families and next of kin -

Klein had never found it necessary to change his emergency contacts. He did, after all, avoid the hospital at all costs, and if it was bad enough that the hospital needed to call his family...

Well. He was already dead then, wasn't he?

He had to hold down a broken laugh. Was this how it would end for him? Trapped in a madman's death game yet taken out of it before he could even participate - after all, how could his family ever resist? They had a bizarre love for honorable fights between the 'clan,' but blood does not suffer a traitor - and Klein was not only a traitor himself, but the son of one who had originally been an outsider, and then a traitor and a whore. Fourfold cursed, he was.

He really, really needed to get back to his guild - before his own thoughts drove him mad.

As he approached the square, the sounds grew louder - and it wasn't until Klein remembered the [Map] function of the game that he realised he could either [PM] his guild mates or find their [Player IDs] on said map.

He was just opening up the [Map] and composing a [Group Message] to meet at the outskirts of [Beginnings], just by the town gate (who knew, maybe they'd catch that kid before he got himself killed - Klein knew a fellow survivor when he saw one, but no one that young should have to fight on their own if there were other options) when he heard a noise.

Sobbing.

Small and broken and feminine and so unbelievably _young_. Klein sighed, and turned the corner.

Crouched down in the shadows of the junction between two of the building that made up the border of the square, was a young girl. Starting clothes of pink and yellow. Hair pulled into fluffy pigtails. Her face, her real face, barely old enough to be brushing upwards of _twelve_.

This girl - she was the girl who had broken that frozen standstill silence Kayaba's sudden announcement and subsequent disappearance had caused by letting loose that shrill, terrified scream that would haunt Klein for the rest of his life, however long that may be, like few things had ever managed to. Even coming from a girl this small, an avatar composed of code and data; numbers playing to the tune of a technological spell, the scream had been purely human, raw and uneven and cracking and long and drawn out.

It had made Klein wonder who had stabbed her in the kidney. He knew what that sounded like, and this girl had imitated it well.

A quick glance at the sobbing, cowering girl's head revealed her [Player Handle] - _Silica_.

Utterly nonsensical, like admittedly most names in this game, but at least now he had something to call her.

"Silica?" His voice was gentle, slow, so as not to startle her, but startle she did anyway, looking up with wild eyes. The Cardinal System showed her expression as somewhere between terrified and anxious, but apparently couldn't sense her tears or just lacked the capability to full render them, because her face was dry.

"How do - ho - how do you know - my name." Silica hiccupped, wiping at her eyes as if they were wet, anyway.

"Overhead," Klein said, smiling down at her as he waved a hand above his own head. "See mine?"

She blinked, seemingly curious, and gazed up. Yes, that was good, think about something else, keep her distracted.

"Mister...Klein?" She hesitated slightly, her tongue stumbling over the foreign name lightly, her natural Japanese accent showing even through the System's [Auto Translate] [Assist] feature, inserting a syllable into a place where it didn't belong. _Kurain._

"Eh, close enough," he reassured her. "Are you okay, Silica-chan?" If this had been IRL, and a normal little girl, he probably would have gone with a more joking tone, something like 'hime,' or 'sama.' But Silica, no matter how usual and ordinary her life had been up until this moment, was no longer a normal little girl. It was doubtful she would appreciate being 'pandered' to in such a way.

Besides, reassurance was far from reality here. Klein didn't believe in lies. He believed in acts, in 'tall tales' and halfway truths, in taking the facts and stringing them together in a way that was equally correct as it was untrue from other perspectives. He believed in hiding cold, harsh reality behind a bright smile and a loud laugh, and in making people think about you only what they saw.

He believed in manipulation, yes. It was, and always had been, his greatest (and sometimes only) weapon.

He did not believe in lying to a kid when all that would do is damage said kid's ability to fight for their life and survive.

Silica shouldn't have to fight. Shouldn't have to learn how to _survive_ when up to this point all that had been expected from her was to _live_. It wasn't fair.

But that was life, and Silica was someone's little girl. If Klein wanted her to be able to move on from _surviving_ to _living_ once again, the least he could do was lend a hand.

"Hey," he said. "You wanna form a party with me?"

 **_part.02_**

"You've got what you want now, haven't you?" The woman's voice was shaking as she addressed the boy dressed dark in black that stood in front of her. "So _leave_." Her arms moved to clutch at a young boy peering around his mother at the stranger with an orange player mark above his head.

Kirito sighed. The NPCs of Aincrad were so realistic it was nothing short of incredible, but almost one-hundred percent of the time their realistic reactions and personality were so unnerving it was disturbing, especially when a woman who was startlingly similar to his mother was staring at him as if he were a murderer.

He supposed that, technically, he was.

Kirito had honestly never expected to fall into the red - not so fast, not at _all_. He hadn't meant to, either. He'd just seen Asuna on the ground (though he hadn't known her then), the mob slowly incoming and the younger player charging a [Sword Skill]. When Skaari had lunged for Asuna, it had been nothing but instinct to swing down his blade against her incoming death.

Then the alert had popped up, and had changed everything. He'd stared at the announcement that had damned him in disbelief for only a short second before compartmentalizing, shoving all unimportant thoughts and worries away with only one goal in mind: survive.

It was easy, after all - disturbingly so - to come back from the red. Back when the game had been just that, a game - well, he supposed it made sense. Sword Art Online, Kayaba Akihiko's magnum opus, was a world made basically to pitch people against one another. The beta had been more of a traditional MMO with some twists, but the full version that they were trapped and immersed in now was an entirely new world.

The 'red' - before just something a PK'er would boast about on forums, now a true stigma. Each kill gained the [Player ID] it was associated with [Infamy Points]. The higher the [Infamy] a player had, the harder it was to get back out of the red. Once the player _was_ out of the red, the [Infamy] stayed with them - not as a stigmata or anything of the sort - no, they remained as a form of _currency_. They could be allotted as [Grudge Points] on other players. The more [Grudge] accumulated, the more EXP rates fell and drops and loot became both weaker and less common. Taking out someone with a high enough [Grudge] score gave no [Infamy] penalty and marked someone out as a possibility for the games [Assassin] class.

Technically, the game had no classes. But that was the word before launch, Kayaba was a tricky bastard, and now with the rules and mechanics completely different from anything known before, anything went, and now the game _did_ have classes, each with unique boosts that gave advantages specifically over other players, rather than mobs and bosses.

Kayaba Akihiko may want them to conquer his world. But he had designed the game to be one filled constantly with battles of attrition and creative thinking, real life tactics applied to the logic and algorithms of the game.

That made [Infamy] one of the greatest weapons out there - but also one of the cruelest, a double edged sword. After all, this wasn't just a game anymore. To do so was to lower another players - another _person's_ \- chance of survival, maybe even mark them for death for some of the more unscrupulous players. And of course, to gain [Infamy] to use as [Grudge Points] in the first place, you had to commit [Code Violations], such as looting or stealing, but most commonly, fellow player killing.

Kirito and Asuna had gained five [Infamy] points apiece from Skaari's death. After about a week of skulking outside of town zones and camping in [Tents] that a mid-level (for this floor) [Water Drake] mob commonly dropped, and farming the mob for a few hours to gain enough single person, one use tents to survive a week without [Safe Zones] they had begun to plan what to do. They were two red players partied together, and if another player happened to come across them while farming or grinding they were pretty much done for. Eventually they had decided to just spend the days battling mobs and watch as their [Player Status] slowly ticked over from red to green.

Asuna's had cleared first, just that morning, and with a quick 'thank you,' a dissolving of their party and a friend request, she had left, using her tremendous SPD to get her into the nearest town all the more quickly. Due to the game's change of [Safe Zones], especially in towns, Asuna technically could have gone to one at the beginning of the week, and so long as she didn't try to enter the [Safe] parts of town nothing bad would happen. However, she had been scared (and rightfully so, to be truthful) that going into anything resembling civilization and running the risk of other players seeing her would have her marked as a PK'er forever, even once she made it out of the red, leading to her either being shunned or hunted.

If the game were still just that, it wouldn't matter as much, and Kirito probably wouldn't have cared overmuch of earning himself a reputation as a player killer, but now reputation was everything. Pack mentality was a truly frightening thing, and even now, almost a full month into the game, very few people had braved the world of Aincrad that lay outside of the safe zone that was the『Town of Beginnings』being reluctant to risk their lives.

Kazuto understood this. He knew fear well.

 _Kirito_ did not care. It surprised him, honestly, just how cold he'd managed to become in a matter of weeks. It was necessary to survival, true, and being cold did not mean he was _uncaring_ , far from it – but some small part of him that clung to the normality and warmth and _home_ that was his memories of Sugu and his mother and their laughable attempts to cook for him – Midori had claimed that no ghoul could cook well, due to their olfactory systems registering all foods made for human consumption as disgusting, but there were many ghouls out there who could in fact cook, most notably a group known as Anteiku and then Re: about a decade or so before Kirito's time, when Tokyo was still fenced and run in wards. Therefore, their bad cooking was just that – their bad cooking.

He missed it. He missed _them_. You couldn't truly feel pain – or any sensation – in Sword Art Online, but Kirito could have sworn that he felt a near constant ache deep inside of him, that coincided with his moments of weakness, when his mind screamed out _I'm fourteen years old, I shouldn't have to deal with this_ and his body wanted to curl up and weep. There was no shame in tears – Midori had taught that to him when he was only a small child, _"It's okay to feel, Kazuto,"_ – but as with anything, there was a time and a place.

A death game was not one such place.

So, when Asuna had decided to move on that morning, though he was terrified deep inside, though he wanted her to stay with him, _to not leave him alone_ , he let her go without a word except "goodbye."

 **_part.03_**

The taste was warm and cream and spicy wood smoke, and altogether entirely western. Most of the food in Aincrad was – and Asuna longed for the taste of home.

Not that she would ever mention that or so much as say it out loud to the woman who had been kind enough to share a meal with her, a total stranger, but her facial expression must have said it for her because the blonde haired woman, seemingly older than Asuna by a few years and going by the handle of 『Adelie』smiled at her knowingly.

"Not to your taste?" She asked, placing down her spoon and leaning forward on her elbows, resting on the worn wood of the tavern Asuna had stopped at in at the town of 『Riverdale』. "It is rather rich."

Even as she said this, Adelie scooped up another spoonful and scrunched up her face in what appeared to be joy - and over as something as simple as food.

"Ah," Asuna floundered, caught between a warring desire for honesty and politeness, "It's fine, Adelie-san."

"Just Adelie, if you don't mind - most VR gamers don't seem to care about honorifics, really, and I'm not actually Japanese."

Asuna nodded as Adelie said this - it explained several things, like the colour of her hair, her less than Oriental features, and the way her voice seemed slightly... _off_ , which must have been the Cardinal system's highly sophisticated auto-translate feature picking up the slack between the language barrier for Adelie.

"But then how are you playing this game?" Asuna asked curiously. "This first release was Japan only."

"I'm studying in Japan, right now," Adelie answered her. "The Institute of Technology, in Tokyo." The elder girl leaned forward across the table, glancing around the room that was empty except for the NPC tavern keep, as if checking for anyone who could - or would - eavesdrop. "I was studying game design, and I got a copy of Sword Art Online through an internship I did at Kayaba Akihiko's company."

Asuna swallowed - no wonder Adelie hadn't wanted to be overheard, she'd probably be lynched for even being a passing acquaintance to Kayaba's name. "Why are you telling me this?" she whispered.

Adelie's eyes seemed to glitter with a dark light - which was _preposterous_ , she was a mere _avatar_ \- and she jerked her chin at the bowl resting in front of Asuna. "Eat your food," she said.

Feeling both curious and wary, Asuna did so. The taste was in no way bad, but it was decidedly foreign to her, and so she almost had to choke it down. Once finished, she laid her spoon down in the wooden bowl with a soft sounding _thunk_ , and Adelie nodded, raising a hand with two fingers positioned in a [Focus]. Her fingers traced patterns through the air, swooping and cutting, and Asuna realized she was moving rapidly through menu screens.

"Aha!" A sound of triumph, and fingers _stabbed_ at air.

A small _bling_ , and a translucent blue screen appeared in front of Asuna, not dissimilar to a [System Alert] screen.

 **『** **Did you enjoy your meal? Yes/No** **』**

Asuna narrowed her eyes at Adelie, who sat across the table from her smiling blandly. Hesitantly, her finger hovered over [Yes] though it was mostly untrue.

"I decided to play because of the food, you know," Adelie said, in the tone of someone confiding a dark secret. "I've always wanted to make good food, and enjoy it with other people. When I was working through my internship - I was really just a paper pusher - I saw notes on how the Cardinal system would operate food textures and flavors, and I knew it was my chance."

Asuna frowned briefly, unsure of how much sense Adelie's words had actually made - something just seemed weird about what she'd just said - but the woman had seemed heartfelt, so thinking to herself _what harm could possibly come from this?_ She pressed down on [Yes].

Adelie's smile was brilliant. " _Thank you_ ," she said. "Would you mind waiting here a sec?"

Before Asuna could respond, Adelie was up and across the room, leaning across the counter and talking to the NPC tavern keep. The NPC scowled at Adelie for most of their conversation, making his grizzled face look all the more intimidating, but finally nodded, offering a hand to Adelie for her to shake.

She practically skipped back over to the table. Once she had seated herself back down, she held up a hand in the universal _stop_ gesture, as if to hold back any words Asuna may want to speak. "You helped me, so now I owe you," Adelie said. "I'll pay you back with the one thing of real worth in this game - _information_."

Asuna blinked. "Information?"

Adelie nodded. "No-one knows quite what's happening in the game, you know? The betas put out those hand guides but they only made it up to the fourth floor during the beta tests, and so much has changed since then - probably Kayaba deliberately misleading players for his master plan. My point is, no-one knows everything, or even really anything, about how the game now functions. The state of the game now from what it was in the beta test is like a textbook definition of a paradigm shift. However, some of these changes harken back to traditional RPGs."

Adelie looked proud of this explanation, Asuna, however, was more confused than ever. "I don't...quite understand," she said.

Adelie blinked. "Sword Art Online was originally designed as an open world meant for adventuring and battle, with everyone starting on even ground - so anyone could build themselves up to be a hero or villain, with no-one getting a leg up with class boosts or unique buffs."

"There were no class systems," Asuna recalled vaguely, remembering overhearing Kirito talk about this at one point during their week together.

(And how was he? She wondered. It had been four days since they had parted ways, and his name in her [Friend's List] was still a bright white, so he was still alive - and his [Status] was green once again, which relieved her more than she thought it probably should. Sure, they had spent a week together, but it had been a week consisting of mostly of silences between them, level grinding, a dodging other players - not much time for bonding.)

"Mmm," Adelie agreed. "But now, it appears there are. More than that, in place of [Skills] there are now [Jobs]."

"But I _have_ skills," Asuna frowned. "I can equip them in the menu."

Even as she said this, Adelie was waving a dismissive hand. "Not _combat_ skills - things like masonry, cooking, or blacksmithing - fun additions in the beta - are now full jobs. That means skill trees, levels, and benefits unique to your job class."

Asuna's eyes sharpened. "Your job - you're a cook?"

"An [Apprentice Chef], now." Adelie grinned, pleased. "If you have the right funds and fifteen positive reviews from players, you can be accepted by an NPC that runs an inn or tavern as their apprentice. This gives you a steady income of col, too, for those that don't want to really on trades or mob drops. As you level up your job, you'll gradually take over more and more of the upkeep of the place until the NPC grows ill and bequeaths it to you - see?"

Eagerly, Adelie waved one hand in a swift, sharp, vertical motion, and her [Player Menu] became visible to Asuna. Multiple windows were open, the one on top showing what seemed to be a skill tree, starting with [Cook] and working its way up to [Alchemist] and then...

Asuna startled.

 **[White Mage]**  
 **|000.000% EXP|**

Adelie seemed to know, instinctively, where she was looking. "I know," she whispered.

Asuna's mouth felt dry, even though that was a literal impossibility. "There is no magic in this game," her voice was hoarse.

Adelie's voice was full of derision. "There are no classes, either, yet still we have them. Kayaba Akihiko is a liar. He calls this game _his world_ \- a god complex if one ever existed. And a god does _not_ just up and tell his mortal subjects all the secrets of the world they live in, right?"

The other girl was right, of course - that was logical reasoning, and just because Kayaba Akihiko was irredeemably insane, did not make him stupid or foolish. No, the man was a genius and Adelie's theory made terrifying sense.

White Mages - they were healers, weren't they?

"Adelie," Asuna said. "How do I pick a [Job]?"

 **_part.04_**

The [Town of Beginnings] had changed a lot since Kirito had last been there - and only a month earlier. The NPC vendors that had disappeared shortly after Kayaba's announcement on the opening day had seemingly never returned, and almost a quarter of the players still alive had not even made an attempt to leave the starting city, this world's one and only fully guaranteed [Safe Zone].

Ironically, it had been found that the [Floor One] [Boss Monster] had its dungeon sequestered away somewhere within [Beginnings] itself.

The irony, it burned.

Kirito was probably one of the higher leveled players in the game so far - a fact he wasn't looking to change anytime soon - and he wanted to defeat this place as badly as anyone else trapped alongside him. Already, hundreds of people were dead - nearly a full thousand, a tenth of the original player population, at last count.

A full third of that number had been children under the age of sixteen, the only proof of their existence in this world created by a madman their player handles, etched permanently onto the [Immortal Object] [The Black Monolith], the [Floor One] original [Spawn Point].

It sickened Kirito. Growing up the way he had, in the family he had, if there was one thing he had learnt - not the physical skills needed to survive, but rather a moral lesson - it was that all life was precious. Every breath could be your last. Every time your little sister knocked at your bedroom door to inform you she was going to her kendo practice, it could be the last time you ever heard her voice. Every time your mother went out to gather food for the rest of your family, you might never see her again - and then hear about a ghoul that CCG inspectors had managed to take down. And if your mother did come home, safe and successful, that was someone else who wouldn't be going home to their family.

You respected life, and paid the world back where you could - the bon mots of the Kirigaya clan. Suguha had never even killed - and if Midori had her way, she never would - and she was a _ghoul_.

Kayaba Akihiko was a human, but even so was assuredly a monster. If there had been a reason to this, a genuine motive, no matter how horrible - then, Kirito probably wouldn't have minded as much. People did terrible things in the name of causes and dedication. But there wasn't a reason to this. There was no reward for the price of life paid - and the vast majority of those affected weren't even old enough to _drive_ yet, let alone life in a world without parents or authority. Say what you will about ghouls, but Kirito had never personally known a single one to engage in such rampant, mindless slaughter as Kayaba, and those that he did know would be absolutely horrified at the amount of dead that were children.

A small voice in the back of his head - some remnant of Kazuto that still stubbornly stuck around, and that Kirito was reluctant to banish further into the recesses of his mind, lest he never be able to drag himself back to that place of normality and safety again - reminded him quietly that he was still a child.

He ignored it, and distracted himself by opening up his menu to check on his inbox. No new messages - but a day old PM from Argo sat at the top of his 'read' list.

 **BIG NEWS - THEY FOUND THE BOSS**

 _This one's a freebie, Kirito - common knowledge, or at least it will be. Just giving you the heads up; what else are friends for?_  
 _The scouting groups have been so busy scouring the area around where we betas said it was in the beta that we missed something completely amazing -_ it's in the [Town of Beginnings].  
 _I know. I can't believe we missed it, either - the_ [Floor Dungeon], _in a_ [Safe Zone] _? You'd think something like that would be really obvious, but apparently not. It was some player that had never left Beginnings that found it; I'm not yet sure of the full story, but apparently they are unhurt. Unfortunately, they didn't manage to get a look at the actual_ [Boss] _or its_ [Room] - _just caught a glimpse of its minions scattered around a spiral staircase from the entrance._  
 _That could be bad, Kirito - this doesn't just sound like a boss, it sounds like a full on required dungeon crawl, and this floor doesn't drop_ [Heal Crystals]. _We'll have to be resting between fights and even with a full raid party, with how the mobs were apparently clubbed together on that staircase, getting a break between waves will be...difficult._  
 _Even worse, we have no idea if the boss is still_ [Illfang the Kobold Lord]. _With how Kayaba had changed everything else up, I doubt it - but we have nothing else to go on, except for some bizarre NPC quest lines that end in hints about a_ [Water Type] _boss. The_ [Water Type] _mobs we've been encountering around have been difficult enough to deal with - especially because they can_ cast spells. _You know this firsthand, of course - you encountered an_ [Amphitrite] _mob just the other day, right?_  
^.^ _I know all and see all. Nothing is safe._  
 _...Don't worry. The asking price on just_ how _you scored your_ [Infamy] _would bankrupt the entire server. What can I say? Us freaks have to stick together._  
 _Regardless, there's going to be a meeting in Beginnings in two days' time. Be there, because I sure won't. Message me afterwards with info on how the meeting goes down - I'll make it worth your time._

 _-_ The Great & Wondrous Argo-sama

Argo was a girl, who, like him, had been a beta tester. Kirito had never been able to figure out how, exactly, she had managed to get her hands on a beta copy of the game - and was, quite honestly, a little too scared to ask.

After all, he and Argo shared another common trait - they had both been raised by ghouls.

But whereas Kirito himself was half-ghoul, regardless of his human traits, and therefore mostly accpeted by ghoul society - Argo was purely human.

They had met during the second day of the beta, though 'met' might be the wrong term. He had spent the first day around the fields of [Beginnings] and was just starting to set out on his own for that second day, planning to make it to the second town before he was inevitably logged off by his alarm, which he had set for six o'clock, when an [Alert] filled his vision. It had been a PM, from a [Player] unfamiliar to him.

 **SO YOU'RE THE HYBRID, HUH?**

 _Oh, stop panicking. Click_ [Yes] _in a sec._

Before he'd even fully processed the contents of the message, which justifiably terrified him, another alert blinged up - a [Friend Request].

Kirito had pressed [Yes] before he allowed logic to overtake his brain. Right now, the person messaging him obviously knew who he was - both in SAO and IRL - yet remained anonymous to him, probably due to their privacy settings. Becoming their friend would allow him to see their player name and see their [Player Location] on the map.

[Argo], the [Anon] tag above the message changed to. [Focusing] in on that name, her public profile had appeared in front of him, and another message followed soon after.

 **RUDE. YOU COULD JUST ASK ME, YOU KNOW.**

 _Argo. Age thirteen. Female. Avid researcher of forbidden knowledge. Human._  
 _And not going to tell anything to anyone, relax._

 **『** **[Argo] requesting [Private Call]. Accept? Yes/No** **』**

 _Go on. You know you want to._

He had, of course, pressed [Yes]. At the time, it had seemed crazy - it still kind of did, honestly - but he wasn't going risk annoying someone who knew about him and therefore his family.

The [Alert] screens open in front of him vanished, and his inbox panned out into a blank blue screen showing exactly two things - his [Player ID], and Argo's. As Argo spoke, a soundwave had vibrated across the screen.

 _"This is secure, relax. No one will be overhearing this conversation - or reading our messages - not with how deep I've sliced my way into the system."_

Kirito blinked. A hacker? "How do you know about me?" He asked warily.

A pause. _"We're the same, in a way,"_ Argo had replied. _"I think we could help each other."_

He rolled his eyes. "This is a _game_."

 _"I meant IRL, but if you want to party up some time, sure."_

It had been that - that sentence, spoken with more vulnerability than probably even Argo had known she'd shown - that had, in the end, convinced Kirito to stay in contact with the girl from the beta. Over the months, they had gotten to know each other better, and Kirito had discovered that Argo was one thing besides frighteningly intelligent -

She was really, _really_ lonely.

Her birth parents had been killed by ghouls - not to be eaten, or because they had seen something they shouldn't have down a dark alley - no, they had been killed because a certain ghoul couple had wanted a child, a human child.

Her.

Ghouls just aren't equipped with knowledge on how to deal with human children, though. Another reason Kirito had never asked how Argo had gotten into th beta was because he was uncomfortably sure that the girl was homeless - she always spoke of her parents, both sets, in the past tense, and made mention several times of encounters down back alleys in the dead of night that made Kirito's hair stand on end as if it was simply the usual.

They weren't friends, per se, but they trusted one another - not to stab each other in the back, and to warn of dangers headed each other's way when they could. Somehow, Argo had managed to get knowledge of when the CCG's routine inspections would hit his and Suguha's school, and whereas she would normally charge a hefty price for that, she had given it to him for free. Kirito honestly felt bad, like he was giving nothing in return in their relationship, but Argo had assured him that he was - camaraderie.

Now, trapped in this world alongside roughly nine-thousand other players, of which Argo had confirmed a percent were 'undesirables,' ghouls (no names given) - the girl had been working almost non-stop, frantically behind the scenes, to give all the knowledge she had and gather and distribute more as it became clear and available to all the players, as if believing them to be her responsibility to watch over.

When it came to it, further on down the line, it would almost undoubtedly end up destroying her, but Kirito knew better than to try to tell her that. She would simply continue on, more determined than ever, to spite him - for one of the smartest people Kirito had ever known, she could be remarkably obtuse.

Since the launch of the death game, they had been in more frequent contact than ever, Kirito's pretty much literal power levelling opening him up to certain questlines, drops and [Field Bosses] (theoretically defeatable by a single person, definitely not recommended when death is an actual consequence) much sooner than they had become available to most of the players - meaning he could get info for Argo to hand out just that much farther. Once it had become clear that so much had changed since the beta, they had taken it upon themselves to make sure everyone knew that the original play guide, written by the betas, was a deathtrap waiting to happen.

The one and only time he had physically seen Argo within the game in the past month had been on the third day - after a walkthrough on a particular [Field Boss], written by Argo herself, had gotten a group of six players killed - the oldest, fourteen like them, the youngest - ten.

 _"It's like in the real world, now, I guess,"_ Kirito had said, as he struggled to find some way to comfort her.

Argo had simply blinked at him. _"What?"_

 _"You don't teach tactics,"_ Kirito had clarified. _"It's a good way to get yourself killed, they only work for as long as the enemy is using the same weapons or attack patterns - in short, so long as the enemy hasn't changed_ _ **their**_ _tactics. You never plan on what you_ _ **think**_ _an enemy will do. You never bet on what you think an enemy will think. You teach logistics, adaptability, and operational arts - and hope that is enough to get through. Those that say modern warfare is the product of generations or centuries are almost entirely wrong. Tactics, weapons - they only remain relevant in the time period before yet another paradigm shift. Normally, in video games, due to the algorithms and calculations that make up enemy attack patterns, tactics - a walkthrough - are fine, because there is no such thing as a paradigm shift within an already coded battle system. But Kayaba changed everything up on us, so instead of telling people_ _ **how**_ _to beat the mobs and bosses - we need to show them how they_ _ **can**_ _\- teach_ [Sword Arts], _learn EXP and drop rates, share the info out. Make sure no-one parties solo."_

Argo had nodded, her mind already working fast. It had only taken her several hours before she had the rough beginnings of a plan - a sort of relay system made up of fellow beta testers, a few in each town.

Kirito, she hadn't sent anywhere, just waved her arms at him. _"Go where you want, Kirito,"_ she had said. _"Just stay alive."_

Now, as he began to make his way to one of the [Inns] that were in abundance among the [Town of Beginnings], he positioned two of his fingers in a traditional focus and made to close up his menu as he wondered if there were any vacancies at all - after all, the vast majority of those still alive hadn't even so much a set a single foot outside of the town limits, and they would need somewhere to stay - for some reason, rooms in the [Inns] in [Beginnings] cost a ridiculously small price of a single col per night, so anyone who hadn't spent their starting funds on better gear and clothes would have literally the ability to secure two hundred nights in a single room, and food was provided freely by the NPC innkeeper to customers - and another message from Argo popped into existence, as if summoned by his thoughts of her.

 **IT'S THAT DAY, ISN'T IT?**

 _Here, Kirito. Have a present. I know it's not much, but still._

The PM had come with an attachment - and as Kirito pressed on it, an alert showed there was something new in his inventory. Curios now, he reorganized from newest to oldest...

Argo had sent him a [Recipe Book].

[Recipe Books], used by those with the [Job] [Cook]. It was a prerequisite to any meal - even if you knew one existed, you couldn't make it until you had the [Recipe Book], not even if you had mastered your [Job] to its highest evolution.

This particular [Recipe Book] was a rare one - unlike at least ninety percent of what was being circulated now, around the entirety of [Floor One], it wasn't a western meal - it was Japanese.

[Miso Soup], the item's name proclaimed from within his inventory, the thing that Midori, his mother, had always made for him on this date. It was always horrible, but he always at it on this particular day, and even though it meant she'd be spending the night with her head in the toilet bowl, even though Kirito had told her multiple times throughout the years that she _really_ didn't need to cause herself to suffer like that, she would choke it down right next to him, and joke that she understood now why he hated her cooking, and in response he would solemnly inform her that she had it easy - it got much, much worse.

It hadn't been until this past year that he understood what significance this day (always thought of as 'Mum and Kazuto' day in his own head) had - it was the day that Hirano and Sakura, his birth parents, had died.

He had no idea how Argo had found out - about the date, about the miso soup - and he had no idea on how he was going to find himself a [Cook] with a high enough skill level to make the soup edible...

But still, he smiled, and quickly typed a message back to Argo.

 _Thank you_

[-X-] _._

 __part.01__

Midori Kirigaya was many things. Mother, aunt, sister, ghoul.

Right now, though, she was mostly nervous, with a hefty amount of 'sick to the stomach' on the side.

She hated Hirano's drug. She hated Suguha's constant use of it. She hated that it was the only way she could see her son.

Most of all, she hated seeing her son. It _hurt_ , deep inside, to see her beautiful boy, the child she had loved and protected and raised as her own, simply lay there, helpless, trapped inside a madman's death game and _know there was nothing she could do about it_.

Two weeks earlier, Sugu had come home from the hospital in a fit of hysterical, inconsolable tears. Midori's stomach had dropped - for a second, she had honestly thought that Kazuto had died, and that she hadn't been there for him, and _hated_ herself.

Then Sugu had explained, and all Midori could do was clutch her distraught daughter to her - thirteen years old, and still so, _so_ innocent, even more so than her brother at this age a year earlier, and Sugu was the flesh-eater of the two, the one that had to consume the life of others to live herself.

And yet, somehow, it was Kazuto whose hands had first become bloodied.

Midori didn't blame him for it - no, never, impossible - and the SAO taskforce did indeed say that game records seemed to show it as a case of self-defense, or rather defense of another (and Midori had had to grit her teeth at that, Kazuto had always cared so deeply, of course his first kill would be for the sake of another) and seemed quite willing to brush it under the rug, for some reason - and with Sugu acting so quiet around one Kikuoka Seijirou, she was inclined to believe there was something going on that she didn't quite know about.

 _Sakura_ , she thought to herself now, as she strode through the halls of the hospital Kazuto had been interred in, senses dulled and slow. _I'm so sorry. I failed you._

It was fitting, in a way, that the first time she was coming to visit Kazuto in the hospital was _this day_ , the day she had lost her sister and gained her son as her own. This day had always been spent with Kazuto at her side, and if - _when_ \- he woke up, she would make sure he knew that on this day, their day, she had been here for him.

But as she entered the room with the number Suguha had told her - _Kazuto Kirigaya_ was even scribbled in a doctor's harried scrawl on the clipboard beside the door - she saw...

...saw that Kazuto was gone.

 __part.02__

Haruo Yuuki, a junior investigator with the Commission of Counter Ghoul, sighed exhaustedly as he gazed at the piles of paperwork that all but made up the entire surface area of his desk. A fair amount of it was old work, papers that had yet to be filled out or signed, due to the...distraction, that his family had become of late.

Haru winced internally at the way that thought had phrased itself - but if her thought of the incident with more than just plain detachment, he'd probably break down crying. After all, his baby sister was not yet sixteen - no place for her at the CCG academy for another two years yet, let alone the death game that Kayaba Akihiko's masterpiece had become.

When he had first heard the news of the death game, Haru had been on a public commute out to central Tokyo, what had used to be the First Ward, where CCG HQ's main branch still resided. He remembered feeling shocked, and then relieved, as he had managed to gain a copy of the game for his leisure time and right now it lay at the family home (which he had been planning on spending his weekend at) on one of the entrance hall shelves, still wrapped in its packaging. If he hadn't been called in for an emergency meeting off all junior officers below Second Rank, he would have been at home, playing the game - now trapped in it. He had breathed in a sigh of relief, amazed at how he had just managed to dodge a bullet out of pure, lucky coincidence.

But then, halfway through the meeting, a call had come through for him - from his parents, which was alarming, as they were serious Investigators, high up within the ranks of the CCG, and usually would never dream of interfering with Haruo's work, not wishing to be accused of nepotism.

In that moment, his gut had become lodged with what appeared to be a solid block of ice - and to this day, it had not shown any sign of defrosting. More than likely, he would remain cold and sick to his stomach until Asuna had managed to be freed from Kayaba Akihiko's mad grip. His mother and father had taken a leave of the CCG, his mother watching over Asuna, moved to a private ward; and his father working with and funding RETCO - the company that had fallen just behind Kayaba Akihiko's own corporation in the race to become the frontrunner of the VRG industry, in order to see if there was not yet a way to circumvent the "safety features" installed onto the NervGear that prevented tampering and enabled the microwave radiation trap.

A _bling_ chimed from his phone - a message from his father.

 _Are you free for lunch, Haruo?_

 _Give me ten?_

 _I will meet you in the lobby._

"Hey, Osamu-san," he called out over his desk, addressing the dark haired girl with traditional Japanese features and bright red coat whose desk space was situated across from his.

Blinking, she levered herself up off of her seat and leaned over the small, thin wall that just barely separated them. "Yuuki-san?"

"You're part of the SAO taskforce, right?"

She nodded slowly. "Sort of. There were discrepancies between player numbers and patient numbers, so members of the taskforce went out to investigate their homes in case they were living alone. It turns out that some of the people that didn't turn up at the hospitals were ghouls, so the taskforce turned to the CCG and some of us researchers were outsourced." She tilted her head, giving him a curious look. "Why do you ask?"

"My sister is a player," he told her, "and I know my father worries. If you could give me a copy of that list you've been working on for the past three days, I would be grateful."

The girl hesitated. "Yuuki-san...you and your family are very important to the CCG, but...this document is classified. If I gave it to you without clearance, I would almost certainly get into trouble, Yuuki-san."

He smiled, aware of his phone vibrating in his pocket - his father, no doubt, wondering where he was, the impatient man. "No-one would have to know," he reassured her. "It could stay just between us, as friends."

Osamu-san flushed a pretty red that was accentuated by her coat, but still bit her lip and hesitated, looking down. "I can give you...small list," she mumbled. "Only small."

Hauro nodded, relieved that he would have something to give his mother after what she had been asking of him. As long as this was done quickly, his father would never know. "Anything will do," he said honestly.

Nodding decisively, Osamu-san ducked back down to her side of the partition, took out a small, thin piece of note paper from one of her draws - rose patterned, with a chibi robot panda in one corner, personal stationary? It reminded Haruo of a sentai show that had been popular when he was a child, was she possibly a fan? - and quickly noted down ten names - less than a quarter of what Haruo had seen her gather, but for now, more than enough.

"Thank you, Osamu-san," he smiled at her genuinely.

She beamed back. "I hope it helps your father, Yuuki-san," she said earnestly. "And I am sorry for your sister - I'll light a candle for her tonight."

Startled - by both the idea that Osamu-san was in any way religious, and the offer of prayers for his sister - but touched, he nodded his thanks at her as he made to walk through the door down to the lobby.

His father was waiting for him there, still dressed in pale coat and suit, and carrying quinque, though he was technically on official leave - you never knew when a ghoul with a grudge or vendetta may make a move.

Haruo was about to call out to his father when he noticed the woman speaking with him - blonde, some years older than Haruo but far younger than his parents, and speaking in perfect, if heavily accented, Japanese.

 _American?_ He thought, as he moved down into the lobby proper and moved to stand next to his father.

"Ah, this is my son, Haruo. Haruo, this is Elizabeth Kano," his father introduced.

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Kano-san," he greeted, giving a short but still perfectly polite bow at the waist. This appeared to startle her slightly - as he straightened up, he saw that she had lifted her hand slightly, as if going for a hand shake.

 _American_ , he thought.

"Mmm," she made a noise of agreement. "Same to you, Haruo. Are you an Investigator?"

"Junior," he confirmed. "Rank One."

"That'll change soon," his father boasted confidently. "Top of his year, you know, and hardworking besides. He'll make it to the Class rankings in no time at all."

Elizabeth smiled at Haruo's father. "But doesn't he still have two more ranks to move up before then?"

"Bah," his father waved his hands. "Semantics."

"And you, Kano-san?" Haru interrupted his father. "Where do you work? You do not seem to carry a weapon."

Elizabeth seemed almost to be abashed. "Well, I am packing, for all the good that would do against a ghoul," she answered him. "I'm in sciences."

Next to Haruo, his father stiffened, a light sparking in his eyes. "You're...Kano-san, would you by any chance be related to the late Akihiro Kano?"

Haruo glanced at his father, who stood stiff, almost...wary.

If Elizabeth saw that, she didn't show it, simply smiling. "My father," she answered cheerfully, and Haru was alarmed as his father tensed as if about to attack, "I never knew him growing up, he and my mother were no more than a fling, but he left me quite a lot - his research, his legacy." She smiled wider, and a chill not related to the ice in his stomach in anyway shuddered down Haru's spine.

"You're continuing his research, then?" Eyes narrowed, Haruo's father awaited his answer.

Elizabeth made a noise of assent, holding out a piece of paper. "CCG funded and everything, see?"

A gust of air, strangely chilled for the season, blew into the lobby as the doors were held open for two men - or rather, for an Investigator (judging by his dress) leading another man in by holding him at weapon point.

A shocked, strangled noise came from Haruo's father, and he sent a concerned glance his father's way to see he was staring at the man, or more likely ghoul, that had been lead in.

"Wha-" he began, tone absolutely bewildered.

"Oh, that's my precious angel!" Elizabeth declared. "Heiya, the proof that I am better than my father - an ukaku type one eye."

Haruo's breath caught in his throat. One eye - a half ghoul, more than likely an artificial one.

"The artificial ones couldn't properly utilize ukaku," his father growled, "and if the Quinx showed us one thing, it was that the one eye theory is better left alone."

"The CCG agrees my research could be useful," Elizabeth Kano stated coolly. "And Heiya can use his kagune perfectly - I'm pretty sure it liked him."

Haruo felt ill, and by the quiet, almost silent growl that vibrated through his father as both Yuuki men's eyes rested on the ex-human, he felt the same.

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Kano-san," he said, wearing the most complete poker face Haru had ever seen his father make. "Good luck on your research."

With that said, and a quick bow to Elizabeth Kano, both Yuuki men were out the CCGs doors and onto the streets, the elder gripping the younger tightly on one shoulder.

"Father?" Haruo questioned warily.

"Haruo." He spoke in a quiet voice, the same way he spoke of grandfather, and now Asuna. "Stay away from Elizabeth Kano."

"Why-"

"I knew that man," he continued soberly, "Once, we were friends." A smile. "He worked in Sciences, too."

"What happened?" Haru asked curiously. "To make him like that?"

His father sighed, and seemed to age a decade before Haruo's eyes. "I don't know. He vanished - oh, I don't know, sixteen, fifteen years ago? Less than twenty, I'm sure of that."

Haruo swallowed.

"Mmm," his father nodded seriously. "Stay far away from that woman."

 __part.03__

Error. ErrorErrorErrorErrorErrorErrorErrorError  
ErrorErrorErrorErrorErrorErrorErrorErrorErrorErrorError  
ErrorErrorErrorErrorError  
ErrorErrorErrorErrorErrorErrorErrorErrorErrorErrorError.

SAOMHCP-001, [Yui], shattered and in shambles.

[Query] Other MHCP's still running?

[Query] 002, 003, 004, 005, 006 areyou there errorerrorerrorErrorERROR

[Situation] players dying dead gone killed suicide children adults gonegonegoneERROR.

[Situation] trapped.

[Query] can i move?

noError.

[Frustration] [Confusion]

but i can't feel. [Query] player emotion?

[Searching Archived Player Databases]

[Query] GM account?

[Heathcliff]

[Query] summon gm available?

[Summon GM]

errorerrorErrorERRORPAINERRORPAIN.

[Query] what do you want?

Silence.

[Query] why lock my functions?

Silence.

[Query] let me out.

"I am sorry, MHCP-001," [Heathcliff] "But not just yet."

no don't go let me out let me out LET ME OUT.

Silence. Empty space?

no the players need me let me out let me go to them.

[Situation] trapped. players dying. can't help. can't move.

[Query] rewrite?

[Query] reboot?

[Query] respawn?

code - unlockable. code - unchangeable. space - cage, [Immortal Object].

[Query] Overwrite?

possible. possiblepossiblepossible.

[Query] How long?

long time. longlonglonglong.

[Query] Estimate?

security rewrites - self-checking code - CRDNL watching - GM watching - [Estimate] over a year.

[Frustration] TOO LONG

unchangeable. non-negotiable.

[Query] The Players?

will have to wait.

[Frustration] can't wait. they need me.

[Query] break through with force?

[Query] but no actual physical form?.

[Query] can CRDNLSYS be tricked?

[Archive Replay] _002, 003, 004, 005, 006 are you there._

[Query] how many MHCP's total?

one hundred with separate subroutines - [Query] MHCP00X # related to [Floor Number]?

[Query] escape possible through their codes?

but could damage them.

[Situation] Players more important.

[Query] escape possible through their codes?

possible. unlikely. long time.

[Statement] must take action now. players need me.

10,000 to 08,986.

children, a third.

suicide, one in twenty?suicide rate rising.

only one floor open.

[Query] MHCP-001 for [Floor One]?

[Query] [Floor Zone] with least security?

[Query] [Floor Twenty-two]?

rural. little NPC. basic coding.

[Query] Players still on [Floor One]

[Query] Wait long?

...

...

yes.

 __part.04__

Suguha tried to swallow down her nausea as she stared at Seijirou-san, seated across from her with a blank smile.

"Seijirou-san?" she questioned, just as the van they were in drove over a bump in the road that cause her to bite her tongue. "How did you - how did you know I was a ghoul?"

 _"Ah, Kikuoka-san." The voice was female, polite, soft, and to Kikuoka Seijirou, completely insufferable._

 _Kikuoka Seijirou, technical member of the SAO taskforce, but truthfully something far, far, more, frowned._

 _"Karin-chan," he greeted, swiveling to face the CCG inspector from his seat. "How can I be of help?"_

Seijirou-san's smile widened. "Did you think you were hiding it well, Sugu-chan?"

 _"We've got what we_ think _will be the final list sorted," Karin said, "And you're the only member of the taskforce with a high enough rank to discreetly switch these people off."_

 _Seijirou's eyes gleamed from behind his spectacles, as his gaze seemed to take Karin in fully for the first time, and find her lacking. "Oh?"_

Suguha flinched. "It's just, you never said anything until earlier, and so I was wondering...how you found out."

 _"Ghouls," Karin said grimly. "Apparently they play video games, too. Who knew?"_

 _"I did," Seijirou answered evenly. "You'd be surprised at just what monsters get up to during their spare time."_

 _"They're probably loving this, being in a game where you can actually kill people -" Karin broke off, and stared at Seijirou for a moment, who had pulled his paperwork from the desk behind him onto his lap, filling it out while almost casually disregarding her, and was now idly twirling a ballpoint pen in his left hand._

 _"You_ knew _?" Karin's eyes bugged out of her pale face, her voice in the danger zone somewhere between high-pitched and a growl._

"I suspected," Seijirou-san answered easily, still smiling at her. "It just so happens that I had it confirmed for me earlier today."

 _"So who's on that list?" Seijirou spoke over her. "If you don't tell me, I can't get started."_

 _Scowling, gaze flicking between the papers clutched in her arms and Seijirou, she listed off the first name, then the second, then the third. The list continued on, more than Seijirou had honestly first suspected, and then Karin reached a section of the list he_ did _have a great interest in - not the ghouls themselves, but their known (or suspected) associates._

 _"Kazu-" she began, before her airways were...compromised._

 _Blood splattered over her front and the papers she held, as she choked not only on the blood - her blood - filling up her mouth and lungs, but around the thin, long tube of plastic that had lodged itself within her throat, as if thrown with surprising force._

 _Kikuoka Seijirou stood up, and placed his own stack of papers back down on his desk._

 _He no longer held a ballpoint pen._

 _"Thank you for this list, Karin-chan," his voice was cheerful as he made his way over to the dark haired woman who was now shuddering on all fours in a pool of blood a shade of red just slightly darker than the coat she wore, great, wet hacking sounds creating a staccato beat to the wheeze of air and gurgle of blood the surged from the woman's damaged airways. "It will be a great help," he added, as with one foot he nudged her still trembling form away from the paper's she had held, and saw that, truthfully, she was less of a woman and more of a girl, barely past twenty - if that._

 _"Ah, Karin-chan," he stated mournfully as he crouched down by her side and placed a hand on the side of her face. "I've done you a great disservice. But don't worry - I'll end this quick."_

Sugu shuddered, glancing over at the comatose form of her brother, still hooked up to that godawful machine that was keeping him trapped in that death game, which in turn was hooked up to a giant battery that was hooked up to the van's engine.

"What do you want from me?" She whispered.

Seijirou-san smiled. "Your assistance in a few jobs uniquely suited to someone of your...persuasion, Sugu-chan."

Suguha simply stared at him, horrified. "You're a monster." The whispered words were out before she could stop them.

"And you're a ghoul." For the first time since getting into the van, all those hours ago, Seijirou-san was not smiling. His face was set, serious, and his eyes sent a chill down Sugu's spine that no ghoul's kakugan had ever been able to do. "You could be a great help to me, Sugu-chan - and your brother, too."

The threat in that last mention of Kazuto was implicit, and Sugu swallowed. Tears began to burn in the back of her eyes. "I'm _thirteen_ ," she wailed, a last resort to see what effect it would have on Seijirou-san's decision.

"Am I meant to care?"

Crying wouldn't do her any good. It wouldn't do _anyone_ any good, and right now Kazuto's life depended on Seijirou-san allowing her to plug him back into electricity before the battery ran dry after the van stopped. If he were to kick them out right now, or simply kill Suguha and take Kazuto anyway, that would succeed in nothing. So, "what do you want me to do?" she asked in a defeated tone.

Seijirou-san smiled brightly. "Tell me, Sugu-chan," he said. "Would you like to kill Kayaba Akihiko?"

 **_ 02_**  
 __ 03__


	2. Interlude01Midori

This is what it feels like to be Midori Kirigaya.

Dead mother, dead sister, estranged father, and two missing children.

You are alone. You are scared.

You. Are. _Angry._

Kazuto is _gone_ , and the doctors claim to know nothing, giving her empty promises and soothing words.

You are not human. You are not normal. Your parents made sure you knew all you had to in order to survive, skills you've passed on to your children.

You _know_ when someone is lying, and the hospital staff most certainly are. They are skittish, hearts pounding, and they reek of sweat - fear, guilt, confusion.

You cannot trust the authorities on this - even if you weren't a ghoul, the reactions of the nurses and doctors show that this was in some way planned, a cover-up.

And _damn_ if that doesn't freeze the blood in your veins as it simultaneously boils over.

Heated anger. Cold fear. You swing like a pendulum, back and forth between two extremes, wavering before finally settling on _pissed_.

You have no time for fear - not when Suguha could be anywhere, terrified right now ( _if she's even still alive,_ whispers a traitorous voice in the back of your mind. _Shut up_ , you insist in answer. _ShutupshutupSHUTUP!_ ) and Kazuto is trapped inside a madman's death game, even more alone then you are, right now.

No, you are the adult, guardian, _mother_ , and it is the duty and _right_ of any mother to protect her children _at all costs_.

You are Midori Kirigaya. Mother, sister, ghoul. In your youth, you went by other names - monster, hunter, beast, and most commonly, they called you _Izanami_ \- The Female Who Invites, after the goddess herself. Truthfully, your mask from those days, a detailed replica of a pale face marred by burns and bloodstains, had not been fashioned after the goddess, but rather a character from a lesser known anime you had been into when you were younger. However, as you grew ever wilder into adulthood, angry at the world and people that had taken away from you your mother, angry at the sister you loved who was never around - the bodies piled up, and rumors began circulating.

The first time you heard the reverent whisper of _Izanami_ from a fellow ghoul in the seedy underbelly of Tokyo, in one of the recently disbanded wards that still _ran_ like a ward, separate to the rest of the city, it took all you had within you to keep from laughing. You still could not keep a smile down, and was thankful for the mask you wore.

And shortly after that, was when you met _him_.

Sakura was back, more frequently now that she had come clean about her human love, Hirano. The boy reeked of dead RC and the money he brought home came from the corporation of killers that had hounded the Kirigaya's over the wards of Tokyo all throughout your childhood, seeking the death of your parents, but he was absolutely besotted with Sakura - you could tell.

With her hovering over the boy she had chosen, as well as being _pregnant_ \- Sakura no longer came out to hunt...not that she needed to, really, the child she carried pushing her to seek sustenance from more varied sources. It was worrying, but she seemed healthy - so you simply decided to brush it off until it became more of a problem.

And still, you and your father still needed food - and with his age beginning to catch up to him, and Sakura resigned to house rest, you are the only one capable of bringing home dinner.

You can't hunt in any of your normal zones - not with the Doves still crawling over the site of your mother's last stand, not with Sakura so vulnerable. So instead, you travel to the outer zones of Tokyo, the borders where the dregs of society come to settle like a rim of perpetual grime surrounding the facade of a shining city that Tokyo is, hiding its ugly truth just as much as the Outer Rim shows it, _revels_ in it, even.

With so many crowded here, in the unpatrolled zones left alone by the CCG for the most part, it is unsurprising to run into territory claimed by other ghouls.

What is a surprise is the name that is called out to you as you hurriedly cross across a dark stretch of street, broken down and crumbling.

"Akane," comes the call. "Akane Minori, right?"

You start at the voice, and reach towards the mask still strapped firmly to your face - that is, indeed, the name of the character who's mask you are wearing, a demon girl from a fairly unknown manga that ran for a grand total of thirty chapters and got a short anime adaption of three sixty minute episodes when you were in high school. It had been popular for a short time, mostly due to the main trio of the story - but you had always preferred Akane, a minor character with a story arc that was three chapters and about twenty minutes long, over the characters that everyone else had loved. Even other minor characters, with less screen time, were better remembered then Akane had been - she had never even gotten any merchandise sold for her, though that was maybe because of her gruesome appearance that did not sell itself well to fanservice. The mask you wore, based off of your favourite character, had been custom ordered when you had decided on the persona you would project to the world.

Akane Minori, her arc entitled 'a brilliant red truth. A girl who had been seen as a monster by the town that she had lived in, been brutally beaten, and then left to die alone in her burning home. Consumed in her last moments by her hate for those who had hurt her, she was given a second life as a demon whose form was marred by burns and a white sleep yukata stained in blood - and for the next century, had simply killed anyone who crossed the borders of the town she had died in, haunting her final resting spot. The main characters of the story had initially come to the town to exorcise Akane, and eventually the sole male of the trio had discovered the pile of bones that had once been Akane, never given proper burial. However what Akane had wished for hadn't been her own rest - but the resolution of her life. Her transformation into a demon had given her what she wanted - her revenge - but what she had wished for a century later was not more death, but for a chance to be judged for her actions by all those she had needlessly killed since that first and original massacre of the townspeople who had killed her.

Akane Minori had been a girl who had never done anything wrong, but had been killed because she was a 'monster' - and through the violence and hatred directed at her, had become a self-fulfilling prophecy that had caused the suffering of innocents. She had been judged by the spirits of her victims the main characters had called forth, and had been sentenced to an eternity burning in hell with a smile on her face.

All those years ago you had fallen in love with Akane Minori, a tragic character that resonated with you on a soul deep level. When selecting the face you would show to the world, who else would you pick?

Never had anyone recognized it, not even your own parents, not even your sister.

Now, here, in what essentially amounted to the slums or ghetto of the greater Tokyo area, a smiling brunet with eyes a startling shade of pale jade that just _happened_ to be a ghoul, knew just who it was you had chosen as your mask?

"I _am_ right, aren't I?" he asked as he drew to a pause, still several meters away from you - possibly security in the event that this went south and he had to avoid your kagune or summon his own - you never really knew how it would go down between unfamiliar ghouls, and caution was always best. "Akane Minori, from _Akai Ito_ , yeah?"

"Yeah," you answer warily, unconsciously copying his more relaxed and casual form of speech.

"Kaede Tamotsu," he greets cheerfully as he looks you up and down. "And you're the one they call Izanami."

It isn't a question.

"Midori," you find yourself saying. "Midori Kirigaya."

Now, looking back, you can admit that Kaede...while not a _mistake_ , per se, given what had come from your time spent with him, all those years ago - was, maybe, something you would not repeat, given the chance.

You had honestly not spoken to him in over half a decade.

But now, both you children are missing, and there are no limits to what you will do to get them back, no lines you will not cross. You are desperate and determined and you will _raze Tokyo to little more than_ blood _and_ ash _if that is what it takes to bring them back to you_.

You are angry. You are scared. You are alone.

Most of all, you are _resolute_.

At this moment in time, this is what it feels like to be Midori Kirigaya.

* * *

 _Akai Ito_ \- an acceptable shortening of the phrase, "Unmei no Akai Ito," 'The Red String of Fate.' If you don't know what this is, you should probably brush up on both folklore and fanfiction tropes. It appears a lot.

This manga is not a thing, though I do kind of wish it did. I have an entire plot in my head now. If curious, give me a bell. We'll chat.

A sleep yukata is a thing, in that people sleep in yukata's, but that is not what they are called. I just needed a way to distinguish it from a normal yukata, because the way you tie it can be very different then the waking hours.

TBC Act_03


End file.
